


Feast of All Saints

by oselle



Series: The All Saints Saga [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gore, M/M, Profanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:28:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 30,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29929311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oselle/pseuds/oselle
Summary: It's 2015 and the Croatoan pandemic rages on, as what's left of modern society disintegrates and a final end seems imminent. Separated from their nomadic group of virus survivors, Dean and his erstwhile guardian angel find themselves stranded in desolate Appalachia, where Castiel soon realizes that Dean has a desperate, last-chance plan to stop the apocalypse on his own. Part 4 of the All Saints Saga (this is a multi-chapter work).
Relationships: Endverse Castiel/Endverse Dean Winchester, Endverse Castiel/Original Female Character, Endverse Dean Winchester/Original Female Character
Series: The All Saints Saga [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2199570
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

When Cass woke it was nearly dawn and he'd been dreaming and was grateful to be awake. Outside the bare tree branches were black against a sky that was pale and wintry though it was not yet winter. He sat up in the bed and the room was cold and he rubbed his face.  
  
In the dream he'd gone down to hell again and brought Dean up through the pits and cities and plains of hell. All around them the infernal engines turning and turning. The forsaken screamed and cursed and begged but Dean never said a word. This was a dream and a memory also. In those days he had been Castiel, who knew the light of heaven and the power of grace and the blessed freedom of loving God alone.  
  
* * *  
  
He found Dean sitting alone in the kitchen. The tall windows behind him showed a view of the back garden and the trees and the mountains beyond all shrouded in mist and above them a violet sky that promised early snow. This house had been built for someone very rich and it would be a good place to spend the winter but there were maps spread out on the table and Cass looked from the maps to Dean and said, "Are we leaving?"  
  
Dean glanced up at him and then back at the maps "We're sitting ducks here. You know we can't stay in one place too long."  
  
"We've only been here a week."  
  
Dean didn't look at him. "What's the matter, you getting used to sleeping in a bed?"  
  
"Maybe some of the others want to stay."  
  
"Well, they can stay if they want. And when the crotes or looters or QC show up I hope it'll have been worth it."  
  
"We couldn't handle looters or crotes?"  
  
"Frank was on lookout in the attic yesterday and saw movement down on the state route. Trucks, human transport probably. That means Quarantine Control. You wanna try and handle _that_?"  
  
Cass looked away to the encircling hills. "No one ever found this place before we did."  
  
Dean shook his head. "It's time to go. I'm not gonna get put in a cage and cooked. Or starve in one of their goddamn camps." He stood up and pushed back the chair with his knees and started folding the maps. "We should finish packing up. Be on the road by tomorrow before it starts snowing."  
  
Cass stood there and watched him and after a moment Dean stopped and looked at him. "What?"  
  
"It's almost winter and there's food and shelter here. These people are tired, Dean."  
  
"Everyone is tired. The whole fucking world is tired. You want to be tired or dead?" He brushed past Cass. "Get the others up."  
  
* * *  
  
He went to the cellar to make one last sweep of the place. There were eleven of them in the group and every one of them had scavenged the house so most of the things that could be of any use had already been packed. He didn't know why he'd come down here. He stood at the foot of the stairs and swept his flashlight around. The owner had built a wine cellar here of stone like some monk's cell and closed off by a baronial oak door fitted with a polished brass handle and hinges. No expense spared. The brass handle glinted warmly in the flashlight's beam and Cass crossed the cellar and opened the door. Whoever had lived here before the virus had either never stocked the cellar or had gotten back in time to salvage his collection because from floor to ceiling the wooden cradles were empty.  
  
He stood there and looked at the empty shelves. The room smelled like dust and wood and faintly of earth. There was a time when he would have wished the place to be full so he could sit down there and get drunk and if he'd had any weed on him he would have gotten stoned too and spent the night with one or two women or whoever would have had him. The night Frank and the others had brought Dean back with a crude broadhead arrow jammed into his leg had been the night of Cass's last toke and last sip. The last of his old power too, the final trace of it gone for Dean and after that the well dried up for good. He remembered the sound of the arrowhead bursting wetly through Dean's leg and how Dean had looked up at him from that dirty table and smiled at him in the cold lamplight. _My guardian angel_ , he'd said.  
  
He couldn't have said why he'd straightened up after that. He thought that maybe he'd become a new man. Again.  
  
"I am a new man," he said and his voice fell with no echo against the heavy stone walls.  
  
The shelves bore labels for the different varietals. On the lowest shelf there were no labels and no cradles and Cass got down on his knees and bent over and laid his head almost on the cool stone floor and shined the flashlight toward the back of the shelf and saw something there. All of the shelves rested on concealed and quiet casters so that they could be discreetly pulled out and Cass pulled this shelf out and at the back of it was a pale wooden crate with 1923 burned onto it and no other markings. He slid the crate open. Inside was a bottle of Scotch whisky packed in excelsior, unopened and the same year on the label as on the crate. He put the flashlight under his arm and held the bottle in one hand and traced his fingers over the label. It was heavy cream paper and the lettering was embossed onto it like an invitation. No expense spared. The whisky was amber as syrup and someone now long gone had poured it into this bottle in the city of Oban in 1923 and Cass sat in that cellar beneath the Appalachian hills in the fifteenth dead year of the dying twenty-first century and stared at it as if it were some treasure salvaged from the ocean floor and now alien and astonishing to the world above.  
  
* * *  
  
The snow began mid-morning and by late afternoon it was thick on the ground and in the trees and still coming down. Dean stood on the porch with Frank and Cass watched them from inside the front hall. He couldn't hear them but he could see their breath steaming in the cold air. Frank had been a longshoreman in Port Arthur and he stood some four inches over Dean and seemed twice as wide but he deferred to Dean as they all did and he nodded and turned and stepped down from the porch and went off around the side of the house, his shotgun over his shoulder as always and his boots crunching on the snow. Dean stood there with his back to Cass and looked out at the encroaching twilight.  
  
Chuck had come up beside him and he looked at Dean and at Cass and Cass didn't look at him and he said, "Guess we're not leaving tomorrow morning."  
  
Cass smiled faintly. "Is that a vision, Chuck?"  
  
"You know I don't have those anymore. Not since all of, y'know...you people split."  
  
Cass looked down at him. "Do you miss them?"  
  
"What, the angels or the visions?"  
  
"Either one."  
  
Chuck shrugged. "You're the only angel I ever met who wasn't a total prick. As far as the visions?" He shook his head. "I never saw anything good anyway. Not like lottery numbers or anything. Not that _that_ would've mattered, huh?" He laughed and elbowed Cass and shook his head again and left. Outside it grew darker and when Dean turned around his face was tense and he came inside and shut the door on the night and the snow.  
  
* * *  
  
He was sitting up in the kitchen when Dean came off watch. It was nearly three in the morning and he heard Dean go into the study downstairs instead of upstairs to bed and he followed him there and found him standing in front of the fire with his back to the room. His rifle was propped against the sofa and he was chafing his hands and his jacket was snow-dusted and steaming in the warmth. He looked over his shoulder at Cass and then back at the fire.  
  
"It's fucking freezing out there," he said.  
  
"Who's on watch?"  
  
"Chuck and Karen. What are you still doing up?"  
  
"Couldn't sleep."  
  
Dean nodded and stared into the fire and Cass sat down in the wing chair next to the sofa. He had the whisky bottle in his hands and he rested it on his lap and was about to speak when Dean said, "We're not leaving tomorrow. We'll wait until the roads clear."  
  
"Okay."  
  
Dean folded his arms and hunched over the fire. "Fuck, it's cold."  
  
"Maybe this'll warm you up," Cass said and he held the bottle up with the label to Dean and Dean turned his head and squinted at it in the dark.  
  
"What the hell..." He crossed to where Cass sat and took the bottle from him and held it up to the fire. The whisky glowed like a jewel. "Where the hell did you find this? We combed this place."  
  
"I guess we missed a spot."  
  
"Son of a bitch," he said and then said it again. "Even before everything went to hell I couldn't've afforded this shit." He uncorked it and tipped his head back and took a drink and held it in his mouth for a second before swallowing and then he closed his eyes and said, "Goddamn, that's good."  
  
Cass put a double old-fashioned glass on the coffee table in front of the sofa. "There you go."  
  
"Fancy," Dean said. He sat down on the sofa and poured three fingers of whisky into it and then tipped the mouth of the bottle to Cass and Cass shook his head. "You've turned into a fucking Mormon on me, Cass. I can't even remember the last time you had a drink. Or a smoke... Jesus, you were like Cheech and Chong back there for a while."  
  
Cass smiled and Dean downed the whisky and poured himself another and leaned back against the sofa. He looked at the fire and Cass looked at him and then looked away into the shadows. There was a window at the other end of the room and the snow was banked up against it and still falling. He could hear it tick against the windowpanes and now and then it would sift down the chimney and hiss when it hit the coals and the flames would wax and wane and sigh in the gust. Except for this the room and the house were quiet. Dean leaned forward and poured himself another shot and took a sip and then sat there with his elbows resting on his knees.  
  
After a while he said, "Cass."  
  
Cass looked at him. He was gazing into the low flames and the light was warm on his face and he looked quieter and softer than Cass had seen him in a long time. For a moment he couldn't answer and then he said, "Yeah."  
  
"Tell me something."  
  
"All right."  
  
"There's nothing of Jimmy left in you, is there?"  
  
Cass shook his head. "No."  
  
"He's dead."  
  
"His soul departed. Years ago."  
  
"He wanted to go."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"What if he didn't? Would you...would he still be in there with you?"  
  
"An angel needs permission to inhabit a vessel and we can't...they couldn't unhouse a soul without permission either."  
  
"Unhouse."  
  
"Evict. Kick out."  
  
Dean nodded and took another drink. Then he said, "Do you know where Jimmy went?"  
  
"No. The angels didn't know where the souls of men went. They knew earth and hell and heaven but in their heaven there were no human souls."  
  
Neither of them said anything. A knot burst in the fire and sent up a flurry of sparks.  
  
"Cass, is my brother dead?" Cass looked at him but Dean was staring into the fire distantly.  
  
"He has to be."  
  
"There's no way...there's no part of him in Lucifer, is there?" He looked at Cass. "It's just his body. That's all."  
  
"Yes. I'm sure."  
  
"What if Sam didn't want to go? If Lucifer can't kick him out, he'd still be in there."  
  
Cass shook his head. "Lucifer's an archangel. The first of all the angels. No one could stand it."  
  
"But Sam was different."  
  
"No," Cass said. "No. If you'd said yes to Michael your soul would have been burned out. You couldn't have stayed. It would have been torment worse than hell to stay and Lucifer's even stronger than Michael. Sam...Sam died as soon as Lucifer took him. He had to."  
  
"Is he in hell?" Dean asked. Cass didn't answer and Dean said, "Cass, is Sam in hell?"  
  
"I don't..."  
  
"He said yes to Lucifer. That can't win you too many points with the man upstairs."  
  
"God is...God doesn't think the way men do. Or angels."  
  
Dean huffed out a laugh. "You still think there's a God?"  
  
Cass put his head down and thought about this. He believed in God but had long ago come to understand that God did not believe in him or in Dean or any of them who had been left on this earth. Had maybe never believed. He said, "I don't know what I think anymore."  
  
Dean didn't say anything to that. The wind moaned outside the house and the coals cracked and fell and flared. Cass looked at Dean and Dean was staring at his feet. His heavy boots had been caked with snow and the snow had melted and darkened the rug in a circle around his feet.  
  
"I used to rub his feet," Dean said.  
  
"Who?"  
  
Dean smiled. "Sam's feet. I used to rub that kid's feet." He poured himself another drink and swallowed it and sat back against the sofa. "We spent this one winter in North Dakota. Not the whole winter just the worst part of it, you know? Sam must've been six, he was already in school. Anyway one day he lost his boots...no, some other kid took them. He'd changed into his sneakers for gym and left them in the coat closet and some kid took them by accident. We stayed after school and tore that fucking coat closet apart. Nothing. So by then it was four o'clock and we'd missed the bus and up there at four o'clock it's practically dark out already. So I said we'd have to walk home, it was like...a mile, maybe. And he only had these cheap shit sneakers from Kmart. I'd've given him my boots but I couldn't've fit in his sneakers and I wasn't walking home in my socks. Jesus Christ. It was so fucking cold up there it was like you could break the air off in front of you. Snow on the ground too. We got halfway home and by then Sam was limping.  
  
"You wouldn't know it, he grew up into such a fucking lumberjack, but he was a little kid back then. I mean a _little_ kid. Hell, he was only six. And there he is limping in these fucking sneakers because his feet hurt so bad. So I tried to carry him but what the fuck, I was only ten years old and he had his whole bag with him and everything. So I carried his bag instead and I've got him by the hand and I'm dragging him along. And I'm scared shitless this kid's feet are gonna fall off. I swear to God not one car passed us. Not _one_ car. The whole way. We got home...home, we had one room on top of a laundromat. It always smelled like Downy up there, but it was warm, _really_ warm when the dryers were going. Sam's feet were all swelled up and I could barely get his sneakers off. He was crying like crazy, poor kid. I got his sneakers off and his socks and his feet were red, I mean _tomato_ red and the tips of his toes were white. I didn't know what to do so I just started rubbing his feet. They were frozen stiff, just frozen. And then he stops bawling and I asked him if it was better and he said yeah. And he wiggled his toes around to show me. Christ, was I relieved. I could see myself trying to tell Dad why they had to cut Sam's toes off."  
  
He paused and rubbed his face. "We were there for about a month and every night after that when the laundromat had closed and it would get really cold upstairs, Sam would ask me to rub his feet. He'd put his goddamn cold feet against my leg in bed and ask me to rub them. And I'd do it."  
  
Dean paused and shook his head. "He was just a little kid."  
  
He fell silent and Cass didn't say anything. In all the years he'd known Dean he couldn't remember him ever saying so much at once. Hadn't heard him so much as utter Sam's name since the night he'd been shot. A year ago. More.  
  
When Dean spoke again his eyes were half-lidded and he wasn't looking at Cass or at anything.  
  
"Sam should have died," he said, and then, "He _did_ die in Cold Oak and I brought him back. If I hadn't none of this would have happened. No Lucifer, no Michael, no broken seals...nothing."  
  
"You didn't know."  
  
"I knew it was wrong. Of course it was wrong, Jesus Christ, you don't have to be a hunter to know that you don't bring someone back from the dead. I just didn't know what else to do. That was my job, looking out for Sam. I had to do _something_. Something. But I think about that a lot now. All the time. I think that was some sort of last chance, Cass. Like a...like an override switch." He looked at Cass. "I fucked it up."  
  
The fire had banked down low and now the room was almost in darkness and was growing cold. Dean turned his head away and closed his eyes. After a while Cass stood up and went to the fireplace and moved aside the screen and stirred the coals and put some kindling and logs on them and waited until they caught and then he put the screen back and stood up. He turned and looked at Dean and thought he was asleep. He went to him and sat down beside him and the glass was tilting on his knee and Cass took it from his hand and looked at the sip of whisky in the bottom of it and then drank it and it was smooth and warm and sweet.  
  
Dean said, "I left him, you know. I left him with no choice." He seemed to be talking to himself or in his sleep. "I should've stayed in hell, Cass. Some good it did getting me out." He smiled. "God, that must piss you off."  
  
Cass sat beside Dean and didn't say anything. With all of his ancient power he had once descended to perdition and brought this one soul up out of all that waste and from among all the damned and then hadn't been able to give him over to his fate. For love of this one soul he had betrayed God and for love of this one soul he fell from grace and so was still falling. He touched the side of Dean's face, barely. Dean opened his eyes and looked at him, turning into the palm of Cass's hand. He had thought Dean was nearly asleep but he was awake and his eyes were clear and focused.  
  
"You know I have to fix this, Cass. You know that."  
  
Cass shook his head and said, "No..." and Dean leaned against Cass's palm and closed his eyes.  
  
"Yes I do. That's my job, now." Then he said, "Christ, I'm tired."  
  
Cass wanted to say something but his throat caught and he couldn't find his breath. He cupped Dean's jaw, his cheek. Hold this moment. Keep it.  
  
There was a sharp crack and Dean opened his eyes and sat up straight. Cass's hand hung there empty. He wanted to believe it had been a knot in the fireplace and knew it wasn't. It came again and Dean shot to his feet.  
  
" _Shit,_ " he said and now there were shouts from outside and Dean grabbed his rifle by the barrel. "Come on," he said and Cass got up and went after him and he turned for just an instant in the doorway and looked back at the warm room and the soft fire and the quiet peace of it and knew he'd never see a place like this again.  
  
Frank was already in the front hall and the others were running down the stairs or from the kitchen and Dean said to Frank, "Crotes?"  
  
"QC."  
  
"Fuck."  
  
"Yeah, we're in the shit now, brother."  
  
"Chuck and Karen?"  
  
"Karen's by the garage, Chuck I don't know."  
  
"Get everyone outside and loaded up. Take them down that back way we scouted maybe they haven't found that. Take the Jeep."  
  
"Got it," Frank said and took off.  
  
Now the floodlights came on and the front of the house with its wide windows lit up so bright Cass felt as if he could see through it like a curtain and past the open door and the tall windows he saw the military ATVs on their quiet caterpillar tires and the high mounted lights and gun turrets and the loudspeaker boomed through the snowy woods telling them there was no reason to be afraid. They should come out peacefully and they would be brought to a safe place.  
  
Dean grabbed Cass's arm and they ran towards the kitchen. "Guns," he said to Cass and in the kitchen Cass grabbed what he could. Pistol, ammo, his coat off the back of the chair. The soldiers were on the front porch now. He heard the Jeep roaring off down the back of the mountain and then he and Dean were through the kitchen and in the garage and Ted was at the wheel of the Ford and he shouted at them to get in. Cass climbed inside and Dean had his foot on the running board and then he stepped back.  
  
"Someone has to lead them off."  
  
Ted said, "What?"  
  
"You go. I'll take the Chevy and lead them off."  
  
"That thing's never gonna make it through the snow."  
  
Cass climbed out of the truck and Ted shouted, "What, you too? Jesus fucking Christ!"  
  
Dean said, "You're not coming," and Cass only slammed the truck's door behind him.  
  
"Get back in the fucking truck!"  
  
"No."  
  
Dean swore and leaned past him into the truck's cab and said, "Follow Frank, there's a rest stop on 321, we'll rendezvous there. If that's screwed keep going to Knoxville. The hot zone's unpatrolled, or it was."  
  
"Son of a bitch, Dean."  
  
"Just go," he said and hammered his fist against the Ford's side panel and Ted floored the truck out of the garage and the last thing Cass saw was Chuck's face in the shotgun window and he thought he would probably never see him or any of them again either.  
  
The Chevy was a late-model Impala they had scavenged in Birmingham. It had been a police cruiser whose roof was still pockmarked from the flashers and it was fast but no good for hauling or the offroads or the snow. They got in and Dean gunned the engine and backed it with tires squealing out of the garage and sawed it around and took off in the opposite direction from the rest of the group. In the headlights two soldiers were by the side of the drive in combat position and they fired on the car and Dean and Cass put their heads below the dashboard and Cass heard the safety glass of the windshield puncture with a flat popping sound. Then they were past the soldiers and Dean handed Cass his rifle and Cass took it without a word and leaned out the passenger window and fired. The soldiers were in winter camouflage but he saw one of them go down in the red wash of the Chevy's taillights and then it was all black behind them. The windshield had three holes in it and the glass was starred and Cass leaned forward over the dashboard and punched the broken glass out with the heel of his hand and it came out in one piece like a sheet and fell away into the dark.  
  
When they reached the state route it was white with snow and beside the treeline was the flatbed rig that had offloaded the ATVs and behind that an H3 Hummer. They hit the road going so fast that the Chevy's rear end fishtailed behind them and Dean had to haul on the wheel to bring it around and by then the H3 was on their tail.  
  
"Fuck," Dean said. "Put on your seatbelt."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Seatbelt," he said and then Cass heard the flat crack of riflefire and the searchlight outside his window exploded and he fastened his seatbelt and Dean did the same.  
  
He heard their tire or tires blow out and for a moment there was an eerie whistling quiet because the car had no wheels on the ground. It landed first on the edge of the roof, passenger side, and Cass heard a window implode and felt glass spraying his face. Both airbags deployed. Momentum kept the car going, flipping end over end, headlights strobing onto snow. Cass was knocked out for such a brief moment he hardly knew he'd been out, only that there was a second of pure blackness before he came back to himself as the car landed on its four wheels with a thunderous shudder. The engine revved hard for a few seconds before cutting out altogether. The keys jingled in the ignition, a silvery windchime sound. He could hear Dean breathing hard next to him.  
  
"Dean?"  
  
"You all right?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
He heard Dean get out and then Dean was pulling him from the car.  
  
"Get out," he said. "Run, follow me."  
  
They had outpaced the H3 but it was coming up behind them now with its headlights and roofrack blazing. He almost fell and Dean dragged him into the darkness of the woods. He heard the men getting out of the Hummer. Under the trees the snow was light on the ground and they were able to step around it so that they wouldn't leave tracks. Their feet passed silently over the soft pine duff. He felt wetness on his temple and reached up and felt that it was lacerated and bleeding. He kept his hand over it so that he wouldn't bleed onto the ground.  
  
They came to a deadfall and climbed over it and Dean pulled him down to the ground. Dean's rifle had a nightvision scope fitted onto it and Cass could just make out Dean's silhouette in the dark with the rifle bridged across the dead tree trunk. He shot the first man just as he came through the trees. Cass couldn't see him but he heard him go down. Dean fired twice more, one right behind the other. They lay there in the dark. No more men came but in the distance they could hear the heavy sound of the flatbed's engine rumbling to life. Dean stirred and stood up and said, "Come on," and Cass got up and they turned from the deadfall and set off into the woods.  
  
* * *  
  
They walked the rest of the night and they didn't talk. It had stopped snowing but it was very cold. The cut on Cass's forehead had congealed into a plaque of frozen blood and his head and neck ached terribly. Only now and then would he look up at the sky to see the light of the stars through the trees. After a while what light there was faded from the sky and Cass knew it must be near dawn. It was too black to keep walking so they hunkered down onto the forest floor and he only knew Dean was beside him because he could hear him blowing onto his hands. He asked Dean if he was all right.  
  
"Bitch of a headache," he said. "I think I hit the roof."  
  
"So did I."  
  
"Anything else?"  
  
"I have a cut on my forehead."  
  
"Where?" In the dark Dean touched his forehead. His fingers were glacial.  
  
"Here," Cass said and he put his hand over Dean's and guided him to the spot. Dean traced his thumb over the cut.  
  
"It's not so bad."  
  
"No."  
  
"We'll stitch it up later," Dean said. He slipped his hand away.  
  
Cass nodded in the dark. They stayed there until dawn began to gray the sky and then they got up and went on. The sun came up but it was no warmer. The snow on the ground had frozen to a brittle crust and the rays of early sunlight that reached through the trees were too cold and weak to melt it and as they walked it broke like glass under their boots. They didn't speak and their breath steamed out in front of them and disappeared in wisps of white vapor. It was now just past seven in the morning and they had been walking for nearly four hours and the cold was making the old broken bones in Cass's foot ache. Ahead of him Dean was favoring the leg where he'd been shot the year before and Cass could tell by the way he was breathing hard through his nose that he was in pain. The wound had left a deep crater where the arrow had gone in and a hard keloid scar where it had come out and the meat of his leg had been torn up all the way through and must have healed in some way that had shortened or twisted the muscle because Dean always had a slight limp now that became worse when the weather was cold or wet or when he was tired and couldn't hide it.  
  
The trees thinned onto a narrow and rutted dirt road where the snowcrust was untouched by any footprints or tire treads. To the right the road wound off into the woods and to the left they could see the roofline of a small cabin. They came upon it through the trees so that they could get a better look at it without being seen and they stood there and stared at it. The wood of the cabin's roof and siding and porch had gone silvery gray with age and neglect and the windows were broken out and not even the faintest whiff of smoke came from the tin stovepipe that stuck out of the roof.  
  
The cabin must have been used only by seasonal hunters because it had the look of a place inhabited by men and that not often. There was a green couch in the front room and a very old television with rabbit-ear antennas sitting on a cart and for no reason at all Dean went to the television and switched it on and flipped the channel dial and it sat there gray and mute and he switched it off. The place had a derelict smell of mildew and rot and ancient cigarette smoke. Cracked and yellowed pull shades on the windows. One bedroom with a naked boxspring on a steel frame. In the kitchen the cabinets all stood open and a few battered pots and one skillet were on the floor as if someone had thrown them there in rage or disgust. There was no table in the kitchen and on the faded linoleum floor a brown stain had long ago dried to a claylike crust with some hairs still stuck in it. Someone had died here, maybe more than one person. Most likely crotes had done it and had taken the dying or dead with them to do God only knew what.  
  
In the bedroom early sunlight was falling through the window onto the bed and Dean told Cass to sit down in the sun so he could look at his head. In all their vehicles they'd kept a duffel packed with emergency supplies in case they had to make a break for it on foot and Dean had grabbed this just before they'd run. He threw it on the mattress next to Cass and then stood there studying the cut.  
  
"Four, five stitches," he said.  
  
He unzipped the bag and took out the first-aid kit and gave Cass a piece of gauze to hold over his eye while Dean cleaned out the wound. It burned and Cass twitched and bit the inside of his cheek.  
  
"I'm not using the lidocaine for this," Dean said.  
  
"That's fine."  
  
Dean tilted Cass's head to the side and stitched the wound. He had a knee up on the bed and his hip against Cass's shoulder and Cass braced himself against Dean so that he wouldn't move while Dean sewed him up. Dean's leg was warm, his hands were cold. He had a quick and practiced touch. Almost gentle. Cass's breath smoked whitely in the pale shaft of light.  
  
"How's your leg?" Cass said.  
  
"All right. A little stiff." Dean went on with his work and then said, "I think the others made it out okay."  
  
"I think so."  
  
"The sonsofbitches didn't know about that road back there."  
  
"No."  
  
"Frank will look out for them."  
  
"We're going to meet them at the rest stop."  
  
Dean was quiet for a moment and then he said, "Yeah."  
  
There was a faint click and snip of scissors as Dean cut the thread and then he took the gauze from Cass's hand and dabbed it over the closed wound. "Done," he said and he turned away and cleaned the scissors and the needle with alcohol and put them away and closed the kit and put it back in the bag. Cass turned and looked at him.  
  
"Do you want to stay here and rest a while?"  
  
Dean shook his head. "We're not gonna find a car out here so we have to hoof it to the rest stop and I don't want to be out here after dark. It's goddamn cold enough." He raised an eyebrow at Cass. "You?"  
  
Cass stood up and said, "I'm all right. Let's just go."  
  
* * *  
  
They reached the rest stop in the afternoon and by then the sky was gray and heavy and it had begun to snow again, just flurries but in a fierce and biting wind from off the mountain. They lay flat on their stomachs on a low rise that looked out over Route 321 and the rest stop on the northbound side and Dean studied it through the scope of his rifle but no scope was needed to see that the area had been turned into a Quarantine Control garrison. A razorwired chainlink fence had been thrown up around it and inside were troop vehicles and soldiers walking around, smoking or looking up at the snow and even from this distance they could hear the steady rumble of a gas generator.  
  
"You don't think Frank drove into that?"  
  
"No," Dean said with his eye still on the scope. "He wouldn't plow into a place without securing it first." Dean put down the rifle and for a moment he put his forehead on his arm and closed his eyes. "Why the fuck didn't you go with them, Cass?"  
  
"Someone had to go with you."  
  
He smiled tightly with his eyes still closed. "In all my ways, right Cass? Was that it? God gave you charge over me to keep me in all my ways?" He looked at Cass. "I think you could've ditched this detail a long fucking time ago."  
  
Cass didn't say anything. He stared at Dean and then he started laughing. Trying to hold it in but laughing with his mouth shut until he was almost snorting and his eyes were watering.  
  
"What's the matter with you?"  
  
"Nothing," he said. He shook his head. "Just...oh my...oh my. _God_." He had to press his head against his arms because he was shaking.  
  
"You got a concussion or something?"  
  
"No," Cass said. He raised his head and wiped his streaming eyes and cleared his throat and looked at Dean. "Are we going to Knoxville?"  
  
Dean stared at him for a second and then said, "Yeah. Yeah, we're going to Knoxville."  
  
They got up and put their backs to the road and started walking. Dean was limping heavily on his bad leg and Cass took the duffel from him without asking and Dean let him take it. Now and then Dean would glance at Cass out of the corner of his eye but Cass walked with his head down and didn't look at him and so they went on.  
  
* * *  
  
They were still on the road when the daylight began to fail. It was cold and gusting and the silhouette of the mountains brooded around them and slowly merged into the darkening sky. Since leaving the weigh station they hadn't seen another person or heard any vehicle or even smelled smoke. The people had left these outlying places in search of food and electricity and safety in the larger cities and those who hadn't left on their own had been cleared out and herded into camps where they could be quarantined and controlled. The ones who hadn't gone willingly had been presumed to be infected and were shot and burned or sometimes just incinerated alive. There were special pens for doing this. The real crotes tended to be wily enough to escape and so many of the executed were healthy but the newspapers and cable television shows that still existed until just a few months ago never mentioned any of it because it was understood that the country would do what it had to do to survive. That the country and the whole world were in fact dying never entered into any of the speeches on moral certitude and the triumph of the American spirit. If the speeches were still being made somewhere they didn't reach these places. Here the people were gone and if any remained they had burrowed into the hills like rats to ride this out. They would not ride this out. There were only four riders left and Lucifer was at their head and everything that God or man had made fell or would fall before them. This was the end of the world.  
  
* * *  
  
Icy rain began to come down after dusk and they took shelter at last in a house near Townsend that stood neighborless behind the trees in a small yard filled with garbage. The front door was locked but gave way easily. The house was dark and cold and had a faint sweet smell of candlewax and powder or perfume. A can of minestrone soup was on the kitchen counter with the top popped up and a spoon sitting in it. Dean picked it up and smelled it and put it back down.  
  
"This is just opened," he said. "Someone's here."  
  
They went upstairs armed and found a narrow hall with all of the doors standing open. Two bedrooms and a bathroom. The beds had all been stripped of their sheets and blankets and in the bathroom the tub was half full of murky water with a bathmat next to it and a towel draped over its lip. A plastic grocery bag of bar soap and shampoo and green dishwashing liquid hung from the doorknob.  
  
At the last room Dean pushed open the door with the barrel of the rifle and in the flashlight's beam Cass saw that this bed was piled with blankets and a shapeless waxy mass was melted onto the nightstand. Dean took a step into the room and swept the flashlight around once and then the doorframe exploded above them in the flat crack and bright flare of one gunshot from the corner of the room.  
  
They reeled back into the hall and pressed their backs to the walls across from each other and held position there in the dark. There were no more shots and it was very quiet except for the rain. A chunk of wood fell from the doorframe to the floor. They heard a slight mouselike scuffle from the room.  
  
"We just need to spend the night," Dean said. "We'll just spend the night and we'll go."  
  
Cass heard something like a snort, a breathy burst of disbelief. Dean heard it too and looked at him.  
  
"If you wanna stay up here till morning that's fine with us. We not gonna bother you, we won't even come up here. We'll be on our way as soon as it's light." He paused and listened. "All right?"  
  
No one answered. Dean looked at Cass and jerked his head back towards the stairs. Cass began to edge himself away from the door with his back still to the wall.  
  
"We're gonna go downstairs now, okay? We're going downstairs."  
  
They backed their way down the stairs. No one followed them and they heard no sound from the room. At the foot of the stairs Dean whispered, "That's a girl up there, that's why she wouldn't answer. But I got a look at her before she got that shot off."  
  
"A _little_ girl?"  
  
"No no, maybe a teenager, but probably older."  
  
"What's she doing here by herself?"  
  
"Who the hell knows. But if we don't bother her she won't bother us. We'll just stay down here, keep an eye on the stairs."  
  
"She's armed."  
  
"So are we."  
  
"She could be sick."  
  
Dean hefted the rifle in his hands. "That's something new?"  
  
They sat crosslegged like campers on the living room floor with their guns across their laps and they split the can of soup the girl had left open on the kitchen counter. It was the first thing they'd eaten since the day before. There was a woodstove in the living room but its smokepipe was bent and cracked open so they heated the soup in the can over a candle and ate it half cold and gluey with crackers from the mountain house that had been packed in the emergency bag.  
  
Dean heard her first and grabbed the rifle from his lap and whirled to the stairs on his knees. She froze there with a pistol held out at arms length and her back against the wall. Cass went for his gun and she said to Dean, "If your friend touches that shotgun I'll shoot him and then I'll shoot you."  
  
"You'd have to be a hell of a shot," Dean said.  
  
"I am."  
  
"That's not what I saw upstairs."  
  
"You took me by surprise. I ain't surprised no more." She had a native Smokies twang in her voice and sounded young. It was too dark on the stairs for him to see anything of her except her jeans and sneakers and her hands around the pistol. "You said you were just gonna stay the night and leave. And there you are eatin my food."  
  
Dean hadn't lowered the rifle. He looked up at her across its barrel. "Seemed a shame to waste it."  
  
"It ain't forty degrees in that kitchen, it would've kept till mornin."  
  
She came down a step. Dean said, "Uh-uh. You're not coming down here with a gun pointed at anyone."  
  
"You're pointin one at me."  
  
"I told you to stay upstairs. I said we wouldn't bother you."  
  
"You don't tell me where to go. This is _my_ house. And I want you out of it."  
  
"Not tonight."  
  
"I could shoot you right now."  
  
"Then _he'd_ shoot _you_ ," Dean said and tipped his head towards Cass.  
  
She came down one more step and now Cass could make out the round face of a young woman probably in her twenties, not close to thirty.  
  
"Not another step unless the gun goes down."  
  
She hesitated. "You first."  
  
"No."  
  
"Are you sick?"  
  
"No. Are you?"  
  
"Would I be askin you if you were sick if _I_ was?"  
  
"Crotes do crazy shit all the time."  
  
"Well I ain't one of em."  
  
"Neither are we."  
  
"What do you want?"  
  
"I told you. Spend the night. We've been walking all day and we needed to get out of the rain, rest up a little. That's all."  
  
"And eat my food."  
  
"Well..." Dean said and he smiled. He was good-looking and his smile was disarming and it made people trust him. Even these days. Cass looked at Dean. He looked at the girl. She was wavering.  
  
Dean said, "You can still go back upstairs and we won't bother you. Or you can lower the gun and come down here and have something to eat and we _still_ won't bother you. It's up to you. No one's gonna touch you. But we're spending the night and we're leaving in one piece. You understand?"  
  
She relaxed her elbows. She lowered the gun to waist level but still held onto it with both hands.  
  
"What's your name?"  
  
"My name is Dean. He's Cass."  
  
She looked at Cass and then back at Dean. She came down another step. With her arms lowered Cass could see her now. An apple-cheeked face with eyes as wideset as a doll's. Long, dark hair that looked red in the candlelight. Pretty girl.  
  
"My name's Bethany," she said.  
  
"Do you want something to eat, Bethany?"  
  
"Well of course I do. It's _my_ food."  
  
She came down the stairs and approached them and Dean sat down and looked up at her with the rifle still in his hands but not now aimed. "The gun, Bethany."  
  
"You said I had to lower it, not give it up."  
  
Dean looked at her. She stood there with the gun hanging at her knee. She raised her eyebrows at him. "I'm not stupid," she said.  
  
"All right," he said. "All right, you hold onto that."  
  
He laid the gun across his lap. Bethany sat down warily, crosslegged like they were. She took the can of soup and looked down into it. "We're gonna have to heat up something else," she said. "You two ain't left me much. Where'd those crackers come from?"  
  
"They're ours."  
  
"Can I have some?"  
  
"Sure," Dean said and pushed them towards her. She took out two and crumbled them into the can of soup and swirled them around.  
  
"Thank you," she said and then she looked up at Dean and smiled. She looked at Dean the way women almost always looked at Dean. The way Cass knew he must himself sometimes look at Dean. Her eyes sparkled in the candlelight. She was a very pretty girl.  
  
* * *  
  
By morning the rain had turned to pellets of sleet and every treebranch and blade of dry grass and piece of trash outside the house was petrified with ice and the trees were bent double under the weight and the steps and rails of the backporch looked as if they had turned to glass. The house was deadlocked inside a sarcophagus of ice and the sleet came down, sometimes switching over to freezing rain and making the ice thicker. The next day was no better. Dean found a roll of aluminum flashing in the cellar and patched the stovepipe with it and wrapped it with duct tape and they broke up chairs from the kitchen and burned them and the stovepipe held. Bethany said she guessed it was a good thing they'd come along or she'd have been a popsicle by now.  
  
He asked Dean what they were going to do about getting to Knoxville and Dean looked out through the backdoor window, through the only patch of glass clear enough to see through. The rest of the window was rippled and watery beneath a layer of ice and outside the day was dim and sleet was falling hard enough to bounce off the backyard's hardfrozen terrain.  
  
"We're pretty much stuck here until this shit lets up," he said. "They can't stay around Knoxville too long though." He rubbed the back of his neck. " _Shit._ "  
  
"There are other rendezvous points."  
  
"Yeah, but..." He shook his head. "This is a fucking holdup I didn't count on."  
  
"It's bad, isn't it?" said Bethany. They looked around and saw her leaning against the kitchen doorframe with her hands under her arms and she was wearing a heavy gray sweater and a white knit hat and her red hair and blue eyes stood out with neon clarity in the arctic light.  
  
"Yeah, it's bad," Dean said and he turned from the door and crossed the room and she looked up at him as he brushed past her and she raised her hand and stroked his shoulder and he didn't seem to notice but Cass did. Her head was turned away from him and she was watching Dean and Cass watched her. She put her hand on the side of her neck and then looped a lock of hair around her finger and stood there with her head cocked and her shoulder against the doorjamb and one sneakered foot hooked around the other ankle.  
  
He said, "Bethany?" and she looked over her shoulder at him. Her eyebrows were up and her lower lip was between her teeth.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Why were you here all by yourself?"  
  
"I told you. QC came and took my folks off. I hid in the cellar."  
  
"None of them were sick."  
  
"My folks? No, none of em. They just came and took em off. Why're you askin me Cass?"  
  
Cass shook his head. "You're just...you're pretty lucky, that's all. I mean...under the circumstances."  
  
"Well yeah." She smiled. "I've always been kinda lucky." She pushed herself off the doorframe and walked out of the room.  
  
* * *  
  
The three of them slept in the living room for warmth and took turns on watch. There was little chance of anyone making their way to the house in such weather but Dean didn't want them all asleep at the same time. The night of their second icebound day Dean pulled first watch and Bethany went to sleep on the couch and Cass lay down on a mattress they had brought from upstairs and for a while he lay awake and looked at Dean sitting by the stove with his rifle between his knees. He thought about Dean on that last night in the mountain house and of all the things he had said, especially of how it was his job to fix what had happened. He hadn't asked Dean what he meant and he still didn't know and he thought maybe it had been the whisky or fatigue or some brooding thought that Dean had simply spoken out loud but Cass knew Dean and knew that when he said something like that it was never just rumination. He turned it over in his mind and came to nothing and after a time he fell asleep.  
  
He dreamt about hell, so vivid that he could feel his hand around Dean's shoulder and knew he was burning him but he felt no pain himself, only the fire of grace as it had once flowed through God and in him and he woke in the dark with the sense of that lost power still warm and humming in his hand and then it faded and was gone. He made a fist and pressed it against his mouth and the weight of his humanity settled on him in slow degrees like shackles descending link by link. He lay there and felt the cold floor seeping into him through the mattress and wondered why Dean hadn't built up the fire and then he realized that he could hear the soft sound of whispers and something else. He opened his eyes and looked at the couch and there was just enough of a red glow left in the stove to see Dean there with Bethany, who was not asleep, who was sitting on her knees beside Dean, who had one hand on his arm and another on his chest and they were talking and they were kissing. She unbuttoned his shirt and put her hand inside of it and he wrapped an arm around her waist and drew her to him. She pulled off her hat and threw it on the couch and he wound his fingers in her hair and she took her hand out of his shirt and pressed it between his legs and he arched up into her palm and Cass watched them and couldn't look away and he thought, _They are going to fuck. He is going to fuck her right there on the couch while I'm lying here._ And he felt sick and shaking and suddenly hard, so hard that he ached from his legs to his belly.  
  
Dean took Bethany by the shoulders and lifted her off him and onto the couch. Her sweater was open and her shirt beneath it was rucked up and Cass could see the pale rectangle of her bare stomach. She was breathless and she reached for Dean and he took her wrists and pushed her away and she made a soft mewling sound and shook her head.  
  
"Shh," he whispered. "Go upstairs."  
  
"But..."  
  
"Just go upstairs."  
  
She licked her lips and said, "Okay," and leaned in and kissed him and then got up and turned to the stairs and began to climb them, undressing as she went.  
  
Cass closed his eyes and lay still. For a few minutes Dean stayed where he was and then Cass heard him get up and cross to where Cass was lying on the mattress and then Dean's hand was on his shoulder shaking him. He opened his eyes as if Dean had just woken him and saw Dean hunkered down beside him.  
  
"You're up," he said.  
  
"Okay," Cass said. He propped himself on his elbow and looked at the couch and Dean said, "Bethany's upstairs."  
  
"Oh," he said. "All right."  
  
Dean handed him the rifle and stood up and went upstairs without another word.  
  
* * *  
  
When Dean was gone Cass got up and for a moment he stood still and listened to the ceiling creak under Dean's steps and then it was quiet. He turned to the stove and laid in some wood and paper and watched as it caught and burned and he closed the stove door and took the rifle and sat down on the couch. He picked up Bethany's hat and looked at it in his hands and then he put it down. The ache between his legs had faded and he felt cold and weary. The wind gusted and hurled ice pellets against the house like shards of glass. The fire crackled in the stove. Beneath these small sounds he could hear them upstairs. They were quiet as people were always quiet these days but he heard them all the same. Bethany's faint, breathy cries. The steady knock of the bedframe against the wall. His mind conjured up an image of Dean between the white spread of her thighs and Dean was naked although it had probably been too cold upstairs for that. He put his elbows on his knees and rested his head against the rifle barrel and closed his eyes.  
  
He thought about himself and his life and of what he had been when he was still named Castiel. The angels had charged Castiel with raising Dean from hell and so he had. They had ordered him to watch over Dean and keep him from harm and help him with whatever he had to do until the time came for him to be given up and so he had done that also. Almost.  
  
They had warned him that Dean would be willful and weak and stupid as all men were and they had been right, but they had never told him that Dean would also be many other things. That he would be a mystery. As all men were. He thought they hadn't warned him because they themselves hardly knew anything about men, nor had they cared to know. Among all of them only Anna might have told him but she had never had the chance. Had Dean been only what the angels thought of him there would have been no danger and no doubt and Castiel would not have fallen and Michael would have taken Dean as Lucifer took his brother and the war would have begun and might even now have already been over.  
  
Now his old brothers and sisters were all gone and at the end they had asked him to go with them, fallen as he was, and he would not. He could not. How sad they had been. How bewildered in their ignorance of love. Yet Castiel had been ignorant also of one last thing and when the angels departed and that final lesson came to him it was shocking and sweet and yet so cruel that he wondered how all men didn't lose their minds. Maybe they did. Sometimes Cass thought he had gone crazy the first time he had looked at Dean with his new sight and seen that he was beautiful and had suddenly loved him and wanted him. With his hands and his mouth and his body. Something so wholly new and unimagined that it still stunned him.  
  
By then Sam was lost and the virus came and Dean was not the same man and the world began to rot and die and so he kept his new knowledge to himself and tried to exhaust it with himself and with women and sometimes with men and still somehow it was never spent as if it came from some invisible and eternal spring that had always been there and once tapped would always flow until his own human heart finally stopped beating and dear God, maybe even after that.  
  
It had grown quiet upstairs and Cass knew that Dean and Bethany were probably asleep. He thought about that. Thought about them together under the pile of blankets on that bed in the back room, naked and warm and drowsy with sex and a sudden bitter and inexplicable hatred for this one girl hit him with such brutality that it cramped his stomach and closed his throat. Envy in all its ugliness. His new humanity at its most awful. He could have wept, or shouted or hit something but he didn't. He sat alone in the cold and the dark of that dirty room and he longed for Dean and hated the girl and pitied himself. Harrowed by love, fouled with jealousy, shrouded in sin, human through and through.  
  
* * *  
  
He dozed lightly and woke when he heard them again and this time she cried out sharply once, breathless and heated, and then they were quiet. It was just before dawn and very dark out and the rain had stopped.  
  
He sat with his head against the back of the couch and legs apart and his hands on his knees. When he heard a creak on the stairs behind him he at first thought it was Dean but while Dean could walk very quietly he didn't have such a light step. He turned his head and looked at Bethany and she paused on the last stair with her hand on the newel post. She was wearing ragwool socks and Dean's blue flannel shirt that came to the tops of her thighs and her bare white legs seemed almost to glow in the dull light from the stove.  
  
She smiled at him and said, "Hi."  
  
"Hi."  
  
"I hope we weren't too loud."  
  
"No."  
  
She smiled again and came into the room and padded over to the stove and crouched down before it with her arms around her knees.  
  
"It's pretty cold upstairs," she said.  
  
"Is it?"  
  
She looked at him and smiled. Her tousled hair slipped over her shoulder. "Well, it's cold when you're not..." She cocked her head and lifted her eyebrows. "You know."  
  
"Maybe you should put something on," Cass said flatly. "Something else."  
  
She stared at him and he stared at her and then he looked away. She opened the stove door and put the last of the kitchen chair legs into it and she squatted there and watched them burn. Then she said, "Hey Cass, do you know what this is?"  
  
He looked at her and she was holding up her hand and he didn't know what she meant.  
  
"What?"  
  
"This ring," she said. She had a silver band on her ring finger and for a second Cass thought it was Dean's but it was too narrow and fit her too well. Then he thought that maybe it was a wedding ring and he said so.  
  
"You're sort of right," she said. "It's a purity ring. Do you know what that means?"  
  
"Not really."  
  
"It means my cunt belongs to Daddy," she said. "I've had it since I was twelve. But Daddy's gone." She stood up and turned to him. "And now my cunt belongs to whoever I feel like givin it to."  
  
She crossed the room silently on her stocking feet and she came and stood between his knees. She had only one button fastened on Dean's shirt and she toyed with it.  
  
He looked up at her. "What do you want, Bethany?"  
  
"Remember this afternoon when you said I was lucky?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Well I am lucky. Here I was sittin all by myself and lonesome and scared and then a couple a cute guys like you come along, I mean _really_ cute guys. And nice guys too, didn't even try anything."  
  
He didn't say anything. He just sat there and looked up at her. She glanced at the dark window and then looked back at Cass and said, "Sounds like it finally stopped raining. Maybe we'll be able to leave today."  
  
"We?"  
  
"Mm-hm," she said. "I told Dean I know where we can get a car and gas."  
  
"And you're coming with us?"  
  
"I talked about it with Dean. You can't leave me here. It wouldn't be long before someone else came along. Someone not so nice like you."  
  
She was standing very close to him and he realized he could smell her. A faint scent of shampoo and some perfume and also sweat and sex and Dean. He could smell Dean's shirt, his sweat, his skin.  
  
She unbuttoned the shirt and let it fall open. She was stark naked underneath as he'd known she would be and she was slim-hipped and flat-bellied and full-breasted and she was so close to him now that her knees were against the couch.  
  
"I want us all to be friends," she said and smiled and she reached down and took his hand and put it on her left breast. She felt bed-warm for all that it was cold in the room and her nipple was hard as a pebble on the round swell of her breast. He raised his other hand and she arched her back in expectation but he took hold of the two sides of Dean's shirt and ran them between his fingers. Dean had had this shirt for a long time and it was faded and frayed and soft. He'd been wearing it that last day in the mountain house, that last night. He'd been wearing it on the first night when they had found the water pump and Dean had stripped off and washed himself in front of Cass with no more modesty or awareness of being naked than an infant.  
  
Cass sat up and leaned forward and closed the shirt and put his forehead against it and it smelled like Dean and felt like Dean and he sat there and clutched at it with his eyes shut. Bethany stayed so still that he almost forgot she was there. After a while he felt her hand on the back of his neck. He put his arms around her waist and laid his cheek against the soft flannel. They stayed there like that.  
  
Then she whispered, "You want him, don't you?" and he startled and looked up at her.  
  
"It's all right," she said. "It's all right." She stepped back a little and took one of his arms from around her waist and turned his palm up and put his hand between her legs. The insides of her thighs were damp and her hair was wet and she slid his fingers towards the opening of her cunt where she was even wetter and she said, "This is Dean, right here."  
  
He stared at her. She smiled at him. "This is Dean's come, can you feel him?"  
  
He couldn't answer her. No one had ever said anything so blackly exciting to him. So intimately arousing. His heart was hammering. He nodded.  
  
She took her own hand away and in the firelight he could see that her fingers were wet and she put them on his lower lip and then in his mouth.  
  
"Can you taste him?"  
  
He had been with women and with men and he knew the taste of them both and he tasted her cunt on her fingers but he also tasted Dean. Dean's come. Running out of her. On her fingers. In his mouth. He closed his eyes and sucked on her fingers. A pornographic gallery flipped through his mind. He had wanted Dean for so long and had dreamed about him and spun fantasies about him that were tender or passionate and sometimes so filthy they were almost violent and now with the taste of Dean's come in his mouth he imagined sucking his cock up to the hilt, sucking Dean deep into the space between his tongue and the back of his palate and making Dean come hard, come spilling way down into his throat and he moaned and couldn't help it.  
  
She pulled her fingers out of his mouth and straddled his lap and began to unfasten his buckle and jeans with deft fingers. He was hardly aware she was doing it. She got him undone and he was so erect she didn't even have to pull out his cock. She raised herself up and then she sank down on him and he slid up easily into her on her own hot slick and Dean's come. She began to ride him slowly.  
  
"See?" she said softly. "See how we can all be friends?" His hands were on her hips, on Dean's shirt. "We're all gonna leave here together and we're goin to Memphis. That's where we're goin. I can get you in bed with him, would you like that, Cass? I'll tell him I want you both at the same time. He might not let you fuck him but he'll be naked and you can touch him and probably kiss him. People will do things in bed they wouldn't ever see themselves doing out of it. Things they wouldn't even _think_ of doing. Hell, maybe he _will_ let you fuck him. Or he'll fuck you. We'll fuck our way clear to Memphis, all three of us."  
  
She rode him like a carousel horse and the couch creaked beneath them and he could smell Dean and taste him and he fisted his hands in the fabric at her back and she moaned and pumped herself harder. He came convulsively and she bounced on him a few more times and then came herself with her head thrown back and her hands laced around his neck. Then she slowed and went still and just sat there. She combed her fingers through his hair. His eyes were closed and he was panting and his cheek was against her shoulder and with the descent from that climax came a bleak and hopeless rush of shame, all the disgrace of love malnourished and so disfigured as it was disfiguring.  
  
He opened his eyes and saw that the windows were lightening with dawn. It was not raining. She brought her hand around to his chin and turned his face up to hers. She smiled.  
  
"Ready to go to Memphis?"  
  
"We're going to Knoxville. We have to meet the others."  
  
She shook her head and laid a finger across his lips. "We're goin to Memphis."  
  
He stared up at her and her face was hidden by the tangle of her hair and he felt sick and troubled and cold.  
  
"Christo," he said. "Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus..."  
  
She giggled and stroked his forehead. "I don't know what you're sayin, baby but I agree with you about the Christ part. Jesus Christ is right."  
  
She laughed and climbed off him and buttoned Dean's shirt. After a moment he tucked himself into his jeans and fastened them and buckled his belt.  
  
"Christ-o, I'd kill for a cigarette," she said and strolled off into the kitchen. Outside the light was growing stronger and Cass heard birdsong for the first time in three days.


	2. Chapter 2

In the summer of 2010 a man in a seaside town in Maryland kidnapped six little boys and six little girls and locked them in a church and set fire to the church. The children were rescued and the man was put away. In the hospital he told Castiel and Dean the same thing he had told everyone else, that a devil had made him do it. Not _the_ Devil, but a devil. Told him to do it so that when the real Devil did come he and his family would be spared. The horror of what he'd done had driven him crazy and there was no trace in that town of Lucifer himself or any demons so they left the man there in his room with his wife sitting blank-faced out in the hall. They spoke to some of the children too and they had no stories of black eyes or sulfur smells, just the one sad, crazy man. For one boy it had already become a tale that he told with animated relish while showing them his own picture in the newspaper. At the door the boy's mother asked them if they'd like to give her a quote so that she could include it in a book she was writing about the ordeal and Dean smiled and said that it took a very special breed of douchebag to whore out a tragedy and the woman had already written down half of what he'd said before she realized what she was writing and told him to go to hell and slammed the door in his face.  
  
Castiel was ready to leave the town but Dean had been there before and he said they had to go to the beach and they went to the boardwalk and sat on a bench and ate french fries with ketchup out of paper cups. Nothing so delicious in any of Castiel's memories. On the sand children were running and shouting and laughing. The sky was bright blue. The sun white, hot, clean. It had stormed the day before and the ocean was not blue but a vivid jade green and Dean's eyes were nearly the same color. His eyes had been just the same in hell although they shouldn't have been. He had found Dean sitting in a charnel pit, unrecognizable and splattered with gore and with the tools of his vile trade spread out around him but he had looked up at Castiel and his eyes had been the same as they would be under the summer sun, even in that place and even after all he had seen and done and had done to him. Did Castiel already begin to love him then? Not yet. But maybe.  
  
* * *  
  
In the kitchen Bethany was putting on her boots and her jacket so that she could go out and relieve herself. Cass heard the backdoor slam and the squelch of her galoshes on the melting ice as she crossed the yard. He sat there where she had left him. His dick was still wet inside his jeans and he thought if he stood up his legs would shake. In the stove the last embers of the fire glinted like the eyes of cunning little imps who'd seen everything and knew everything and now winked at him shrewdly in the delight of their knowing.  
  
He leaned over and unlaced his boots and pulled them off and stood up and then turned to the stairs and climbed them quietly on his stocking feet. Upstairs the hall was dark with all the doors closed save the one at the end and he went down the hall and stood at the threshold of that room with his palms against the doorframe. The bed was piled with quilts and blankets and Dean was a shapeless hump beneath them and Cass could hear him breathing low and evenly in a deep sleep.  
  
_I can get you in bed with him, would you like that, Cass?_  
  
He would. He would like that very much.  
  
_People will do things in bed they wouldn't ever see themselves doing out of it._  
  
They do. All the time.  
  
_Maybe he_ will _let you fuck him._  
  
Cass stood there and thought about that. Dean might let him do it. No. He _should_ let him do it. He had gone down to hell itself and plucked Dean's soul from perdition and knitted his rotting corpse back together and conspired with him to betray his own brethren and spared him from becoming Michael's vessel and lost his grace for him and loved him and lusted over him with no reciprocation and of late hardly even a kind word and for more than a year since the night Dean was shot he had lived like a dry monk in a cold cell and now here they were together alone with no supplies to be gotten or camps to be scouted and suddenly this girl. This remarkable girl. Waiting in this house as if just for them like something in a fairy tale, as lovely and wanton and bold as a young goddess with her plump tits and her willing cunt and her extraordinary ideas and oh, wasn't it time, time at last for Castiel to collect his due? He stood in the doorway and stared at the bed and he could see it so clearly, no car and no Memphis and no Knoxville just the three of them all naked and fucking and fucking and fucking in this bed in this room. Thrusting and sucking and licking and clutching and coming and then no Bethany at all just him and Dean who was beautiful and was beholden to him and so by all rights belonged to him and to him alone.  
  
His heart was laboring and his breath was quick and shallow and he stepped into the room and glanced out the little window. Between the tree trunks he could see the bright purple of Bethany's jacket as she squatted there. Dean's clothes and empty holster were on the floor and he toed at them and then quietly pushed them under the bed. He looked at Dean and Dean was sleeping almost on his stomach with the covers pulled up over his shoulder and his face as still as a child's.  
  
For a moment Cass just stood there and then he hunkered down beside the bed. He clasped his hands between his knees and stared at Dean. The sun was up now and shining through a gap in the hills and through the bare and dripping trees and into the room and it was white and warm and clean. Falling on his shoulder as he crouched there and on Dean's face and his closed eyes and it reminded him of a day on the boardwalk in a seaside town during the last year when the world had still held the tenuous semblance of being God's well-ordered creation. Had he loved Dean already then? Of course. Long before the angels left and when he had still been Castiel, an angel himself.  
  
His gut twisted and his throat closed up and he reached out because he wanted to touch Dean, just touch him and then Dean bolted up on one elbow with his .45 out and aimed at Cass's forehead. Cass froze. They stared at each other.  
  
Dean lowered the gun and exhaled. "What the fuck are you sneaking up on people?"  
  
"I'm sorry..."  
  
Dean sat up and tossed the gun on the bed and ran his hands down his face and through his hair and then dropped them in his lap and sat there and looked at Cass.  
  
"I thought you'd gotten over staring at me while I sleep." He looked around the room. "Where's Bethany?"  
  
"She's outside taking a shit."  
  
"Oh," Dean said. He looked at the window. "She must be freezing her ass off."  
  
"It's warmer out. It's thawing."  
  
"Good, maybe we can finally get the fuck outta here."  
  
Cass stood up. He looked out the window and saw Bethany crossing the lawn back to the house.  
  
"She said she's coming with us."  
  
Dean looked up at him. "She told me she could get us a car and gas. What am I supposed to do, say thanks and leave her here?"  
  
"She thinks we're going to Memphis."  
  
Dean made a face. "Yeah, she said some shit about that last night and I told her to forget about it."  
  
"I don't think she got the message."  
  
"Why, what did she say to you?"  
  
_We'll fuck our way clear to Memphis, all three of us._  
  
"She said she talked about it with you."  
  
"Well," Dean said. He closed his eyes and rubbed them. " _She_ talked about it and I said it wasn't gonna happen. We'll take her to Knoxville, hook up with the others."  
  
"I don't think that's a good idea."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I don't think she should go with us."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"I think there's something wrong with her. I think she's...what is she doing here all by herself? You really think she hid from Quarantine Control in the _cellar_? Like they wouldn't have looked?" He shook his head. "She could be sick."  
  
A dirty grin lit up Dean's face. "Whatever that girl is, she's not sick. In fact she's the healthiest specimen I've met in a long time."  
  
"Something's off about her. Something's not right."  
  
"Shit, everybody's a little off their rocker these days. So maybe she's kind of..." He flapped his hand in the air, "Eccentric. But that's it. We'd know if she was sick."  
  
"The virus changes. The symptoms can mutate from person to person, you know that. Sometimes it's aggression, sometimes it's withdrawal, sometimes it's..."  
  
"What?  
  
"Being..." He tasted her fingers in his mouth. Tasted Dean in his mouth. How easily she'd guessed and how plainly she'd stated it and how swiftly she'd used it. "Being manipulative," he said. "Making up crazy shit that she thinks is true. Like you saying we were going to Memphis."  
  
Dean laughed. "If I had a buck for every chick who overestimated how persuasive she was with her panties off, I'd be...I'd be able to buy myself a goddamn roll of toilet paper."  
  
Now he could hear her stomping her boots on the kitchen floor and a clatter of pans. He stood there and stared at Dean and didn't say anything and Dean looked up at him. Neither of them moved.  
  
Then Dean said, "Oh no no no. Don't you do that. Don't you try and read me, I know you can still do it sometimes."  
  
"You care about her."  
  
"She's a great lay."  
  
"No, it's more than that. You feel sorry for her. You want to help her. You want to _save_ her."  
  
"She's getting us a car and we're giving her a ride. That's it. Quid pro quo, Clarice."  
  
"That's not it."  
  
" _Shit,_ " Dean said. He threw back the covers and swung his legs off the bed and stood up. He was wearing just his t-shirt and was naked below the waist and Cass reflexively looked away from him to some point on the wall behind. "Where the fuck are my clothes?"  
  
Cass swallowed. He felt his face flushing. "I think they're under the bed."  
  
Dean got down on his hands and knees and pulled out the pile of clothes and stood up and started getting dressed. "Listen to me," he said. "Since you're gonna read my mind anyway or whatever the fuck, here it is. That girl," He pointed downstairs. "That girl is twenty years old and if we leave her here, she's gonna starve to death or get killed or worse. She's got a gun that she can't even shoot straight, how long would she hold out against half a dozen crotes or road rats or horny QC motherfuckers. Hmm?"  
  
"If she can get a car why didn't she leave already?"  
  
"Maybe she's scared, Cass, did you think about that? Scared of being out on the road alone?"  
  
Cass snorted. "I think she knows how to take care of herself."  
  
"Well, her luck's gonna run out sooner or later. And I've got enough shit on my conscience, thanks." He bent over and began strapping his holster onto his leg. "She's going with us and she's staying with Frank and that's it."  
  
"She's staying with Frank."  
  
"Yeah, that's what I said." He paused and glanced up at Cass and then looked back down and unfastened one of the straps and refastened it.  
  
"Where will you be?" Cass said and Dean didn't answer. He asked him again.  
  
"This fucking thing is shot," Dean muttered.  
  
Cass stood there and watched him and after a moment he nodded. "Detroit," he said quietly. "You're going to Detroit. That's why you wanted me to stay in the truck. You're going to Detroit. Alone."  
  
Dean pulled on his boots and went down on one knee and began lacing them.  
  
"Dean?"  
  
"Yes," he said. He looked up at Cass. "All right? Yes."  
  
Cass turned his head. He stared at the wall, the window. He put his hand on his forehead.  
  
"You can't," he said. He looked down at Dean and shook his head. "You can't...why would you...why would you even think of doing that?"  
  
Dean stood up. "Because I have to and you know it. You said it yourself."  
  
Cass gaped at him. When he spoke it was almost a whisper. "When did I ever say that?"  
  
"When you were still an angel, when you still knew things. You said I had to be the one to stop it."  
  
"No...no no no Dean, I didn't know...I only knew what they were telling me..."  
  
"You said it had to be me and you were right. And you said if Sam fell...if I _let_ Sam fall he would take the world with him and you were right about that too. I have to end it."  
  
"Dean, please..."  
  
"No. Don't say anything else.  
  
They stood there and stared at each other and Cass couldn't breathe. He couldn't seem to close his mouth. He _had_ said those things. Had said them when he'd still been Castiel and after Dean had tried to run from his brother and from God and himself and Castiel had gone to bring him back and had found him in some waitress's house in Dalhart Texas and he had told him those things believing he knew what they meant. Believing that the will of angels was also the will of God and so was good and holy and would lead Dean to mercy and to grace and Castiel had already loved him and had wanted all these things for him and more besides.  
  
"I made coffee," Bethany said and her voice startled Cass so that his shoulders jumped. He looked around and saw her in the doorway with two steaming mugs and wearing her purple puffer jacket with the hood thrown back and the white fur collar across her shoulders. Her legs were pale and bare above the tops of her galoshes. She was pink-cheeked from the cold and in the sunlight she looked fresh and wholesome as a morning in spring.  
  
"Did I interrupt something?"  
  
Dean said, "Did you tell him we're going to Memphis?"  
  
She blinked. "I just said... "  
  
"Because we're not. If that's in your head get it out. There's nothing there."  
  
"But maybe we should..."  
  
"Maybe nothing. Okay? I'm not driving four hundred miles in the wrong direction."  
  
"The wrong direction from what?"  
  
_From Detroit,_ Cass thought. _From Detroit, oh you stupid fucking bastard._  
  
"From Knoxville," Dean said and his eyes shifted to Cass for a second and then back to her. "Where's this car?"  
  
"At the Tarbox place."  
  
"Where's that?"  
  
She said nothing for a moment and then, "I'll take you there. It's hard to find."  
  
"All right. We'll get it and come back here and pack up. Anything in cans we'll take with us. These blankets should go too."  
  
"We're leaving today?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
She set the mugs down on the dresser beside the door and pocketed her hands in her jacket and looked at Cass and then at Dean.  
  
"We should wait until tomorrow."  
  
"No."  
  
"The storms in these mountains can take you by surprise. I've lived here all my life and you can believe me about that. Just cause the sun's up this mornin don't mean a thing. We should give it another day, see if the weather'll hold."  
  
"We've been stuck here long enough. We need to go while we can."  
  
"Just one more day, Dean, just to be safe. Just one more night," she said and smiled.  
  
"She's right," Cass said suddenly.  
  
"What?"  
  
"She's right, we don't want to get caught out with no shelter."  
  
Dean narrowed his eyes and stared at him and then shook his head so slightly it was barely a movement at all. "No. We're leaving today." He stepped between them and walked out the door and to the end of the hall and down the stairs.  
  
"Why did you tell him that about Memphis?" Bethany hissed. "What's the matter with you? I had this whole thing under control."  
  
"Bethany..."  
  
"Did you tell him what we did? Did you tell him that too?"  
  
Cass held a hand up to her and put his head down. He closed his eyes for a moment and then turned and left her there.  
  
Dean was in the kitchen putting on his coat and he glanced at Cass when he came in and then turned and walked out the backdoor onto the porch and down the steps and Cass followed him.  
  
"Dean..."  
  
"I'm going to take a piss, Cass. You wanna watch me do that too?"  
  
He began to cross the yard and Cass followed him with ice water soaking through his socks and he grabbed Dean's arm and Dean turned and shook him off and pointed at him.  
  
"I know what you're doing. Oh, she's right, we should stay another day. Right. One more day. Then two? Three? You think that'll delay us enough? Keep us from finding the others? _Believe_ me, I will leave your ass here. You and her. If you don't want that to happen you shut the fuck up and do what I say."  
  
"You can _not_ go to Detroit."  
  
"I have to!" he shouted. "He's my brother! It's my job!"  
  
"That is not your brother."  
  
"It's enough of him for me. I have to end this. For the world and for him."  
  
"He won't kill you. He won't. He'll take you and have you possessed by one demon after another and you'll still be in there. He'll do things to you and make you do things and you won't even be able to die. It'll go on forever, Dean. It'll be worse than death. Worse than hell."  
  
Dean stared at him and then turned and started walking away and Cass went after him and tried to take his arm again and Dean wheeled around and shoved him so hard that Cass stumbled backwards and overbalanced and went down to his hands and knees in the icy slush.  
  
"You should have made me find him! Why the fuck didn't you do that, Cass? Why the fuck didn't you?"  
  
The bright sun and its glare off the white ice and water were in his face and he raised a dripping hand to shade his eyes and looked up at Dean and couldn't say anything.  
  
"I wouldn't talk to him and I wouldn't see him and I left him alone. _I_ gave him up to Lucifer. _I_ did. Why didn't you tell me, Cass? Why the fuck didn't you tell me?"  
  
Cass put his head down and clenched his eyes shut. His heart ached with the things he knew. He could have told Dean that Sam had gone to Lucifer as willingly as he'd once gone to Ruby, told him that like that sly and smirking demon Lucifer had made Sam promises, only these far greater than anything Ruby had ever had to offer, promises cunningly bent to Sam's pride and desire and that fed the things he believed and wished to believe about himself. He could have told him that Sam lost all thought for anything or anyone but himself and no word or action from Dean no matter how sincere or desperate would have meant a thing to him and he could have spoken the truth that Sam did all of these things of his own free will and under no coercion or duress but he didn't.  
  
"He was farther gone than you knew," Cass said softly. "You couldn't have saved him."  
  
Dean looked away and blinked and pressed his arm against his eyes. He lowered his arm and looked at Cass.  
  
"I should have tried," he said and then turned away.  
  
* * *  
  
She was standing on the top porch step when Cass came back to the house and she was fully dressed with her white hat back on her head and her galoshes still on her feet. She watched him cross the yard and when he climbed the steps she said, "What in the hell were you all talkin about?"  
  
He stood next to her looking at the house while she looked at him. Then he said, "We're not going to Memphis." He looked down at her. "We're going to Knoxville."  
  
"Oh, I see. So you get what you want and I don't get nothin."  
  
This made him smile. "How exactly did I get what I want, Bethany?"  
  
"You got to dip your wick and I'm still stuck with goin to goddamn Knoxville."  
  
Cass coughed out a laugh. It surprised him as much as it surprised Bethany and she said, "I don't know what the hell's so goddamn funny but we'll see how funny you think it is when I don't show you where that car is."  
  
"Bethany, I think you're smart enough to know this is your only chance to get out of these mountains in one piece. You won't fuck it up."  
  
"Fuck it up? _You_ fucked it up. I would of had us on the road to Memphis by tomorrow if you'd just gone along with it and they got _lights_ there and runnin _water_ and _food_..."  
  
"They've got nothing there."  
  
"They've got a _vaccine!_ I _heard_ it. They got a goddamn _vaccine_ there!"  
  
"There is no vaccine. Not in Memphis, not anywhere. Memphis is the same as anyplace else and probably worse."  
  
She pressed her mouth into a grim little line. "You're a dumb lyin shit," she spat. "Why don't you go in the woods and fuck your boyfriend? Does he know that's what you want? What d'you think he'd say if I told him?"  
  
Cass was tired all of a sudden as if this new morning had lasted for days and he felt lost and heartbroken and more hopeless than he had in some time.  
  
"You go ahead and tell him whatever you want," he said and he opened the door and went into the house.  
  
* * *  
  
The Tarbox place lay some half a mile from Bethany's house and the three of them walked there through the woods with the trees shimmering and dripping all around them. They didn't talk and the only sounds were their own footsteps and the ice cracking and melting and falling to the ground.  
  
They found the car under a tarp in a carport. It was an Oldsmobile Delta 88 and Dean pulled the tarp off and walked around it and kicked the tires.  
  
"Someone just left this here?"  
  
"Yeah," she said. "There's gas in the trunk."  
  
He jimmied open the trunk and found a red plastic gas can and he held it up to his ear and sloshed it.  
  
"Where are the people who lived here?" Cass said and Bethany shrugged.  
  
"Where's anyone?"  
  
Dean pried the cover of the gascap open and then twisted off the gascap and started filling the tank. Bethany sat on the rear bumper. Cass popped up the driver's door lock and leaned inside to take a look and then he heard the double chock of a shotgun behind him and he froze. From the corner of his eye he could see Dean standing completely still.  
  
"Get the hell away from that car."  
  
Dean didn't move and Cass began to straighten up and the same voice said in his direction, "You just take it real slow, fella. You, put the gas down."  
  
Dean took a step back from the car and set the can down on the ground and put his hand inside his coat.  
  
"You keep your hands where I can see em."  
  
Dean raised his hands halfway and began to turn around. Cass backed out of the car and stood up and when he turned he saw an old man in a bathrobe and slippers with a double-barrel shotgun against his shoulder and he jerked it at Cass and then back at Dean.  
  
Dean said, "We didn't know there was anyone here."  
  
"Who told you to come here? That little girl?" He snorted.  
  
"He's sick," Bethany said.  
  
"Sick? I ain't sick. You're the sick one."  
  
"It's all right," Dean said. "We're not taking the car. We're leaving."  
  
"What, so you can come back in the middle of the night? Kill an old man in his sleep? Hell no."  
  
"We're leaving. We're not coming back. Just let us go."  
  
"The hell I will," he said and he fired once and Dean hit the ground. The blast was shockingly loud and it echoed in the woods and sent a flock of birds up from the wet trees in a thunder of wings and Cass grabbed his rifle and then heard one more shot, clear and sharp and the old man spun around in a quarter turn and landed on his face in the mud.  
  
Cass turned and looked at Bethany. She lowered the pistol and put it back in her pocket. She crouched and picked up the spent shell and put that in her pocket too. Dean was down on his knees and he looked from her to Cass and then at the old man.  
  
"Are you hit?" Cass said.  
  
Dean shook his head. He stood up and they both went to the old man and stood over him for a minute and then Dean reached down and took the shotgun from his hand. He was limp and blood was bubbling out of a hole in his forehead.  
  
"She can't even shoot straight," Cass said. They turned and looked at Bethany where she was still standing at the Oldsmobile's bumper.  
  
"What?"  
  
"You said there was no one here," Dean said.  
  
"I knew he was sick, I thought he'd be dead by now."  
  
"He was sick. Croatoan?"  
  
"Yeah." They stared at her and she said, "I used to come here every other day to check on him and then a couple a weeks ago he just came out stark naked and ran me off the place with that shotgun and I knew he was sick. You saw him, he acted like he didn't even know who I was. I've known him all my life. Acted like I didn't know who he...like he didn't know who I was." She looked at them. "If I hadn't of shot him you'd be dead by now. Stop lookin at me like I did somethin you wouldn't of done yourself."  
  
Dean stood there for a moment and then he hoisted the old man's shotgun. He breeched it open and looked at the one round left in the chamber and breeched it shut and walked back to the car. He leaned the shotgun against the car and picked up the gas can and started filling the tank again.  
  
Cass said, "Dean?"  
  
"There's nothing we can do for him. We still need the car."  
  
Bethany went over to Dean and she rubbed his back and he didn't look at her. She laid her cheek against his shoulder and stared at Cass.  
  
Cass sat down in the driver's seat and rested his forehead on the rifle's barrel and closed his eyes. He heard Dean screw the gascap on and close the cover and put the can back in the trunk and slam it shut. Then he heard the rustle of the plastic tarp and he looked up and saw Dean spreading it out next the old man's body and Cass put aside his rifle and stood up and went to help.  
  
"Just get that corner there," Dean said and Cass crouched down and straightened out the tarp and together they lifted the old man's body onto it and wrapped him up.  
  
"That's right decent of you," Bethany said.  
  
Dean picked up the body and Cass went before him into the house. It was cold and it stank and they just stood there in the dark of the old man's living room as if neither of them knew what to do.  
  
"The bedroom's probably in the back," Dean said.  
  
"I think we can put him on the couch."  
  
"Yeah. Okay."  
  
The couch was littered with threadbare blankets and pillows mended with duct tape and old newspapers and Cass cleared these off onto the floor and Dean laid the man down and straightened up and stepped back and looked at the body.  
  
He said, "Do you think he really was sick?"  
  
Cass glanced around the small, filthy room. "I don't know. Maybe. He _did_ try to shoot you."  
  
"We _were_ stealing his car." Dean sighed and then he said, "We can't leave her here, Cass."  
  
"I know. What happens if we don't find Frank?"  
  
"There are other groups, they're hidden all over the place. We'll find one of them."  
  
"And leave her there."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"And leave me there." Dean didn't say anything and Cass went on, "I told you I wouldn't leave you. You remember everything else I said, do you remember that? I said I'd follow you to hell."  
  
Dean shook his head. "You were still an angel then. Everything was different."  
  
Cass was quiet for a moment. "Am I that useless now?"  
  
Dean finally looked at him. "You're that mortal now."  
  
"I already died once for you. Do you think I wouldn't do it again?"  
  
"I don't want anyone dying for me."  
  
"Dean, please. Please don't do this. Why do you even think you'll be able to?"  
  
"I have the knife. I have the Colt. It has to be me so something has to work."  
  
"I won't let you go."  
  
"What are you gonna do, Cass? Annie Wilkes me with a sledgehammer?"  
  
"I don't know what that means."  
  
Dean smiled. "Doesn't matter."  
  
"I'm serious, Dean. I won't let you go."  
  
"I didn't ask for permission."  
  
"Then you're not going alone."  
  
Dean put his head down and stood there and then he said, "We should go. It's getting late."  
  
There was a box of shotgun shells on the floor and Dean stooped and picked it up and put it in his pocket. They left the old man's body on the couch and closed the door behind them. Bethany was standing beside the car hugging herself and she looked at them from under the knitted edge of her hat.  
  
"You all were in there a while. Everything okay?"  
  
"Everything's fine," Dean said. "Let's go."  
  
The three of them got in the car. Dean keyed the ignition and the engine coughed and sputtered and turned over and he put the car in gear.  
  
From the backseat Bethany said, "He _was_ sick."  
  
Dean said, "I know, Bethany."  
  
They went back to the girl's house and packed up what they needed and an hour later they were on the road, headed north.  
  
* * *  
  
The roads were empty and they drove without talking to each other. Dean turned on the radio. Hissing silence on the FM dial. On the AM band a scattered handful of broadcasts. Country music. Religious readings. One recorded public service announcement from the Tennessee National Guard telling people to stay in their homes, to avoid public gatherings and travel of any kind. The announcement would end and begin all over again. Who knew how long it had been running. Between these few traces of humanity nothing but the hornet's buzz of AM static.  
  
After half an hour Bethany told Dean to pull over because she was carsick and he told her to puke in a bag if she had to.  
  
"Just pull over, pull over, please!"  
  
He wrenched the wheel to the right and slowed the car onto the soft shoulder and Bethany kicked open the door and jumped out. She skidded down the low slope beside the road until they couldn't see her anymore. After a pause they heard her retching and then it was quiet.  
  
"What the hell is she doing?" Dean said to himself and started to get out of the car.  
  
"Let me go," Cass said suddenly. "You stay here with the car."  
  
"All right," Dean said. He pulled his legs back in the car and shut the door. "Hurry up."  
  
Cass climbed out of the Olds. He left the door open and picked his way down the slope. He could see Bethany a little way off in the trees. She was bent over her knees with her hands laced over the back of her head. A steaming puddle of vomit was on the ground in front of her. He came up to her carefully. She was a hell of a shot.  
  
"Bethany?"  
  
She didn't answer him. She sat there rocking back and forth on her knees.  
  
"Bethany?"  
  
"Leave me alone."  
  
"We have to get back in the car. We can't sit here."  
  
"I'm sick."  
  
"What's wrong with you?"  
  
She whipped her head up to glare at him. "I'm carsick, y'jackass. Are you deaf? I'm fuckin carsick!"  
  
"You can be sick in the car."  
  
"We couldn't of just gone to Memphis, could we?" She was crying now. "We couldn't of just done that?"  
  
He looked at the girl and could see nothing here of that morning's naked and firelit temptress and yet that girl had also been Bethany. Not lusty and cunning or even sick as he had thought but only desperate and scared and pitiful as this girl was, as the whole world had become.  
  
"I'm sorry, Bethany," he said quietly. "It'll be all right though. It will be. Now come on, we have to go." He tried taking her arm and she wouldn't let him and she scrambled up onto her feet and wiped her mouth on her sleeve and began climbing the slope. There was a frieze of wet leaves stuck onto her jeans below the knees.  
  
"You don't touch me," she said without looking back at him. "You don't fuckin touch me."  
  
* * *  
  
They reached Knoxville around noon. The day had turned overcast and muggy with no wind. The lower half of the city had been abandoned and sat purged and immolated on the southern bluff of the river. People squatted here in derelict houses and shopping centers and hid from Quarantine Control and Knoxville's Acting Regional Command although even those seldom swept the area anymore. Their rendezvous site was the airport which had also been burned but where some of the old terminals and hangars were still standing and gave good cover and many places to hide.  
  
They drove into the airport on a crumbling access road. The car lurched and gritted over broken asphalt and other debris and over the engine they could hear the silence of the place. They parked beside the arranged place of meeting, a squat administration building next to one of the hangars. There were points like this everywhere and everyone in the group had known them but they also knew that there were limits to how long any part of the group could wait for another. Especially for only two. They left Bethany with the car and the shotgun and went in together. Inside darkness and the sound of dripping water somewhere and nothing else. In the cafeteria they found a dead refrigerator with the door torn off and a looted snack machine. Three verses from the Psalms were graffitied on the wall next to the employee bulletin board and Dean shone his flashlight on them.  
  
"That's Frank's writing," he said. "Those are coordinates." He read the numbers out loud, memorizing them. "Looks like it's east of here."  
  
They went back to the car and closed the doors. In the backseat Bethany sat with her knees drawn up and her hands in her lap and her forehead against the window. The shotgun lay on the seat next to her. She looked at them when they came in.  
  
"There ain't no one here, is there?" she said softly.  
  
Dean got the road atlas from the duffel and flipped through it.  
  
"They're in West Virginia. About a day's drive if the roads aren't closed." He closed the atlas and put it back in the duffel and zipped it shut and then sat up and turned the ignition.  
  
Then Bethany said, "West Virginia? West _Virginia!_ " They turned around and looked at her and she was sitting upright now with her feet on the floor and her hands planted on the seat. "You said we were goin to Knoxville. Well there it is."  
  
Dean put the car in gear and looked at the girl in the rearview mirror.  
  
"We aren't going into the city, Bethany."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
He sat back against his seat. Then he leaned forward and downshifted to park and switched off the engine and turned around.  
  
"You wanna try and walk over there, this is what'll happen. You'll get rounded up and put in a truck and taken to a quarantine camp. Depending on how crowded things are they might just fence you in with a bunch of other folks and burn you up for the hell of it. If not they'll leave you in the camp and forget about you. Even if you make it into the city, so what? You think it's like it used to be in there? TV and Starbucks and shopping malls? It's not. People are starving in there. They're dying from good old-fashioned shit like TB and smallpox. It's all over, Bethany. Everything's you knew? It's gone."  
  
She stared at him wide-eyed. "Why would you say that?"  
  
"Because it's true."  
  
"He's right," Cass said and she turned on him.  
  
"You're just takin his side cause you wanna fuck im."  
  
Cass put his head down. He swallowed and pressed his lips together.  
  
Dean said, "Jesus Christ, Bethany. We didn't even have to take you with us."  
  
"Well you _shouldn't_ of," she said. "You shouldn't of you shouldn't of you shouldn't of!" she shrieked and then she threw open her door and was on her feet and running, running in her bright purple coat with her red hair streaming behind her and she disappeared around the side of the building.  
  
"Oh _Christ_!" Dean said and he was out of the car before Cass could stop him and Cass jumped out and ran after him.  
  
"Don't! Dean, don't follow her!"  
  
Dean came halfway to a halt and turned around and said, "Ten minutes. We don't find her in ten minutes we're outta here." He paused and listened. It was very quiet and they could hear the rubbery clomp of her galoshes in the distance.  
  
"We should leave her."  
  
"Ten minutes. Stay with the car. We can't leave it out here."  
  
"No..."  
  
"Stay with the car," Dean said and he was running again and he called, "Ten minutes," over his shoulder and then he was gone.  
  
* * *  
  
He came back around the corner and saw someone sitting in the car. In the shotgun seat going through the glovebox. They must have been under surveillance this whole time. He stood there frozen and the person in the car looked up at him. Insectile in a white biohazard suit and full-face respirator. For a moment the two of them were locked in place and staring at each other and then Cass snapped the rifle around from his shoulder to sight it and something hit him on the side of the head. He went down dazed and put his arm up and saw two more white suits and bug masks looking down at him and then he was hit again and he was out.  
  
* * *  
  
He came around to a sensation of movement. He wasn't lying down but slumped against a wall and he opened his eyes and pushed himself upright. A row of dim LED lights shone down from the ceiling and lit up the inside of the truck. The truck was full of people and some of them glanced at him when he sat up but most of them didn't and then someone touched his shoulder. He turned and saw Bethany beside him in a fetal crouch. She was ghostly white. A red X was inked onto her cheek.  
  
"Cass...?"  
  
"Where's Dean?" he said. He grabbed her arm. "Where's Dean?"  
  
She shook her head. "I don't know. He's not here."  
  
"He's not..." Cass glanced wildly around the truck. "He's not here? How is he not here?"  
  
"I don't know. I ran into that terminal and they got me right inside the door. I thought I heard Dean behind me but he never came."  
  
"Were there gunshots? Did they shoot him? Bethany, did they shoot him?"  
  
"I didn't hear anything. I don't know what happened. It was so fast. And then they threw you in here and I thought Dean would be with you but he wasn't. He's not here. He's not anywhere."  
  
Cass put his hands to his forehead. He covered his mouth and sat there staring.  
  
"Do you think he's gonna come for us? Cass?"  
  
He couldn't answer her. After a while she asked him again and he shook his head and said, "No, I don't." And then he said, "He's going on. He's going to Detroit."  
  
He looked at Bethany. There were bright tears in her eyes.  
  
"I'm so sorry, Cass."  
  
He sat there and stared at her. After a moment he said, "What is that on your face?"  
  
Her hand fluttered up and she touched her cheek and looked at him, stricken. "They said I'm sick. They had some thing like a laser and they shined it in my eye and they said I have it." She started to cry. "Daddy had it and he killed Momma and I killed him before he could do it to me but I was real careful, I didn't get no blood on me or nothin, not even when I was buryin em. I washed my hands real good too. I can't have it. I ain't been actin like that. I didn't hurt nobody. Did I?"  
  
"No," he said. "No you didn't."  
  
"Are they gonna burn us?" she said and from behind her a man sat up, grizzled and ragged.  
  
"They gonna burn _you_ , sister!" he proclaimed and Bethany shuddered and scuttled up against Cass and pressed herself into him. "You carryin the pestilence is what you are! The LORD has set his mark upon you!"  
  
She put her hands over her ears. "It's not true. It's not true."  
  
"Oh it's true all right. They gonna burn you like they used a do for them witches."  
  
"Preacher," Cass said quietly. Bethany had buried her face against his shoulder and moved by a sudden and awful pity he put an arm around her. "Hold your tongue."  
  
"They gonna burn you too brother, consortin with this whore of Babylon..."  
  
"Be quiet..."  
  
"Arrayed in purple and scarlet just like in the Book! Mother of harlots! Abomination of the earth!"  
  
"Shut the fuck up!" Cass shouted. "You don't even know what the fuck you're saying!"  
  
The man sat back and smiled at him.  
  
"These shall hate the whore," he quoted serenely. "And shall make her desolate and naked and shall eat her flesh and burn her with fire."  
  
"They ain't gonna burn me," Bethany said. "They ain't gonna burn me!" and she sat up abruptly and pushed Cass away and turned and shot the preacher between the eyes and then shoved the barrel under her chin and shot herself dead.  
  
There was screaming and the people in the truck began to run and fall over each other to get away from her and the blood. It had fountained up in a crimson spray on the corrugate metal wall and she was slumped beneath it like a ragdoll with her eyes wide open and Cass stared at her and two thin rivers of blood began to seep over her forehead and her eyes and then down her cheeks like tears. He was alone with her and the dead man in this corner of the truck and there seemed to be a graveyard silence around them and his heart was weighted with sorrow and weariness of the whole merciless world.  
  
He eased Bethany down onto the floor and took off her jacket and covered her face. He covered the preacher's face too with the man's tattered shirt. Then he went back to Bethany and sat beside her with his hand on her arm and tried to pray, but he had lost all the prayers he'd known as an angel and all the songs of heaven and so he just stayed beside her and said nothing and hoped that God would not forget that he had made this child and would welcome her home after her terrible exile in this forsaken waste.  
  
* * *  
  
The truck shuddered to a stop some time later and he heard voices outside and then the unlocking of a latch and the back of the truck rattled up on its frame and gray daylight streamed in. Outside were soldiers in white suits with their faces all covered and they were armed and they began pulling the people out of the truck. The people screamed and shouted and pressed themselves in a horde to the front of the truck and Cass was shoved backwards and grabbed by the arm and pulled out onto the ground. He looked up and around and saw that they were in some sort of railyard. It was drizzling and the old iron tracks snaked off around them and in the distance he could see the gray span of the river that they had crossed. A soldier wrenched him up to his feet and shoved him with the barrel of his rifle and shouted something at him that was muffled by his respirator and Cass stumbled along in a daze toward the chain-link cage where they would put him and the others and burn them and Cass didn't care. He would never see Dean again and Dean would go to Detroit and be taken prisoner and he would rather be dead than have to live with knowing that. He had failed God and failed Dean and all his life as both angel and man had come to nothing.  
  
He was in a crowd of people all jostling and terrified and some were pleading with the soldiers and others were crying and still others were praying or singing. He walked with his head down and barely noticed when a soldier grabbed his arm and began to pull him away.  
  
The soldier said, "Don't look up."  
  
It was Dean's voice beneath the respirator.  
  
"Just keep walking."  
  
He staggered on his feet and Dean held him up.  
  
"Don't fall."  
  
Cass shook his head. He put his hand on Dean's where it held his arm.  
  
"Don't touch me," Dean said and Cass took his hand away. "Where's Bethany?"  
  
"Dead."  
  
"Dead?"  
  
"She shot herself. She was sick. Croatoan."  
  
"Son of a bitch."  
  
They kept walking. Dean pulled something from the utility belt that was over the suit.  
  
"When I throw this," he said, "We run, understand?"  
  
Cass nodded.  
  
"This place isn't fenced in so if we keep running we'll make it."  
  
"Okay."  
  
Dean pulled the ring on the canister and then in one quick motion he turned and lobbed it over his shoulder. It hit the ground and rolled right to the edge of the cage and it sat there for just a second and then exploded. A red gout of flame and black smoke shot up and out and the wall of the cage was rent from top to bottom in a shriek of tearing steel. And then a chaos of gunshots and people screaming and running as they saw their chance to escape. The thunder of their feet on the ground and the stink of explosive and cordite and seared metal and they were running with others running behind them and then a pickup tore around the corner with a guntower mounted in the flatbed and there was a volley of shots and beside him Dean fell.  
  
He thought Dean had hit the ground for cover and he fell down next to him but when he looked at Dean's eyes through the mask he knew something was wrong. Even over the shots and the screams and the pounding feet he could hear Dean gasping through the respirator and he rolled onto his side and pushed the mask up from Dean's face and pulled it off with the white hood of the suit and Dean lay there staring at him, his face blanched with pain.  
  
"You're hit?" he said and Dean nodded.  
  
"Can you get up?"  
  
He nodded again but then the pickup came back around for a second pass and Cass threw himself over Dean and said, "Lie still. Play dead."  
  
They lay there for a long time, too long, and Dean began to shake beneath him.  
  
"Lie still, lie still, oh God."  
  
The truck sped past them and went back the way it had come and toward the explosion site and around them lay bodies, all still. He forced himself to lie motionless for another five seconds and then he said, "Okay. We have to run."  
  
He got up and wrapped his arm around Dean's waist and pulled him to his feet and Dean groaned through clenched teeth. They ran in a low stoop away from the site and the smoke of the explosion and the confusion covered them. He could feel Dean's bad leg giving out underneath him but much worse than that was the hot wetness saturating Dean's clothes and spreading under Cass's hand and he knew Dean couldn't go much further. Ahead of them sat the old Southern Railway freight office, four stories of century-old red brick with a short flight of granite steps leading up to double doors and he pulled Dean up the stairs and into the building. It was dark inside with most of the windows on the first floor boarded up and seemed very quiet after the bedlam outside. He paused to let his eyes adjust and Dean leaned against him and he put his other arm around him to hold him up. To his left was an arched entryway with the word RECEIVING carved into its lintel and this too was boarded over. Ahead of him was a broad staircase and to the right a passageway blocked with debris.  
  
"We have to go up the stairs," he said and Dean nodded.  
  
They'd made it halfway up when Dean bowed over Cass's arm and vomited. After that he stayed on his feet but he was going limp and Cass was mostly dragging him. He got him up to the second floor landing and looked down a hall lined with glass-fronted doors. Most of them stood open and the glass was punched out and the rooms were filled with trash and crumbling plaster and broken glass. At the end of the hall was one closed door with the number 210 painted in flaking gilt on its frosted glass window and Cass pushed it open onto an office still furnished with decaying desks and filing cabinets and cracked vinyl chairs and the carpet wore a soft film of green mold, the only color in that gray place. He closed the door and finally lay Dean down on the floor and Dean rolled onto his side and pulled up his knees. There was blood on his mouth. Cass gently turned him over onto his back and Dean stared up at him.  
  
"It's bad," he said.  
  
"I know I know. I have to see." The front of the white suit was dark red over Dean's stomach and all down his left leg and Cass unzipped it and spread it open and pushed Dean's shirt up. There were two holes in his abdomen below his ribcage. He slid his hand under Dean's back and Dean groaned and Cass pulled his hand away.  
  
"Tell me."  
  
"Two shots. No exit wounds."  
  
Dean closed his eyes and turned his head away. "Ah, fuck, fuck," he said and pressed a fist to his mouth.  
  
Cass pulled the belt off the suit. There was a holster on it with a military-issue service pistol and an aluminum canteen and four utility pockets. He dumped out the pockets and found a canister of mace and a taser and five hundred-dollar bills in a tight fold and in the last one he found a blister pack of four morphine ampoules. He broke one open and flattened his hand on Dean's neck and jabbed the ampoule in just above his collarbone. He waited about thirty seconds and then Dean opened his eyes and looked up at him and nodded in relief.  
  
"I want to get away from this door. I'm going to pick you up."  
  
"No, don't move me."  
  
"I have to."  
  
"You'll make it bleed more...don't...just get an arm under mine. I can get there."  
  
"You sure?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
He helped Dean up onto his knees and then to his feet and together they staggered to the corner of the room. He lay Dean down on his back and Dean turned over and coughed a splatter of blood onto the furred carpet. He was gasping and Cass raised him up and settled him against the wall and he seemed to breathe a little easier and Cass took off his jacket and put it behind Dean's head.  
  
"The place was crawling with them," Dean said. "I followed you. It's easy to blend in when everyone's dressed like a goddamn condom." He smiled and closed his eyes.  
  
Cass pulled off the biohazard suit and started tearing it into strips. He folded one of them into a thick pad and pressed it against Dean's wounds and he took Dean's hand and put it over the pad and said, "Hold this. Just like this."  
  
Dean left his hand where Cass had put it. Cass took one of the other strips and eased it under Dean's hand and then took the two ends and brought them around behind Dean's back. He laid his head against Dean's chest and crossed the strips tightly and brought them back around and slid them up under Dean's hand again and repeated the process. Dean's hand was going slack on the second pass.  
  
"What are you doing?" Dean muttered.  
  
He repositioned Dean's hand. "Just keep holding this, okay?"  
  
"What."  
  
"Just hold this."  
  
"Cass..."  
  
"Just hold it, hold it goddamnit! Hold it so I can bandage it! "  
  
Dean shook his head. "There isn't any point."  
  
"Yes there is," he said and went back to bandaging. Wrap around. Cross. Double cross in front. Around. Every time he laid his head against Dean's chest he could hear his heart hammering away and the labor of his breathing and it terrified him.  
  
"I'm never leaving this room, Cass."  
  
"Don't say that. I'm going for help."  
  
"Help? What help? Where?"  
  
"We're in the city. There are places, people here who treat these things. We know how to find them."  
  
"Cass," he said. "Cass, stop. Look at me."  
  
He stopped and looked at Dean and Dean reached up and touched his face and then dropped his hand to Cass's shoulder.  
  
"Just stay with me, okay? It won't be that long. Just stay with me."  
  
"If I stay here, you'll die."  
  
"I'm going to die anyway."  
  
"No," Cass said. "No. We've been through worse than this. This is nothing."  
  
Dean closed his eyes and was quiet and Cass thought he had fainted. Or died. He laid his fingertips against Dean's neck. His hands were shaking so hard he couldn't feel a pulse. Dean opened his eyes again.  
  
"Promise me you won't go to Detroit."  
  
"I won't. _We_ will."  
  
Dean shook his head. "You know what I mean. I don't want you...thinking you have to finish the job. I know you, Cass. You'd do that."  
  
"I am going to get help and then _we_ will go to Detroit. Or wherever you want to go. I said I'd follow you anywhere."  
  
"All right, Cass. All right." He smiled. "You're a pain in my ass. Always have been."  
  
Cass looked down. He tightened the bandage and blinked tears out of his eyes. Dean wrapped his hand around Cass's neck. He bowed his head until their foreheads were touching.  
  
"Please stay."  
  
Cass pulled back and took Dean's hand from around his neck and pressed it against the bandage. He didn't look at him. Couldn't look at him.  
  
"There are three ampoules of morphine left. Don't use them all at once. There's water in the canteen here. I should take the service pistol. I'll leave the rifle." He pulled Dean's gun out of its leg holster and put it in Dean's hand and wrapped his fingers around it. "Hold onto this. Hold it." He glanced up at Dean and Dean nodded.  
  
"I'll leave the taser with you too. I'll be back before dark. I promise. And I'll bring help."  
  
He stood up and wedged the service pistol into the back of his belt and put the mace in his pocket and took the money too. He turned and crossed the room and when he was at the door Dean said, "Goodbye, Castiel."  
  
He paused and laid his head on the doorjamb for a moment and then he turned around and went back to Dean and fell to his knees and kissed him. Held his face in his hands and kissed him. Then he stood up without another word and with the taste of Dean's blood on his mouth he walked away and closed the door behind him and went down the hall and down the stairs and out.  
  
* * *

Outside the rain fell, the sky was dark. On the other side of the railyard the fire had banked down to a smolder and a few soldiers were dragging off the corpses. He edged around to the far side of the freight office and then set off across the tracks. Dean had been right, there was no fence around the place and in a while he had put the yard behind him.  
  
There was a hospital on the other side of the river but it was too far away and he knew the place would be so fortified that he wouldn't even be able to get near it. Even if he could no one there would have helped him or even spoken to him. The city was stifling in the rain and he walked until he was in a sick sweat and he came to a park where people were living in tents and lean-tos made of cardboard boxes or sheet metal or other trash. Here he stopped and spoke to some of the people until he got an address on West Vine Avenue and a name of Blunt.  
  
The place on West Vine was still marqueed as the Crowne Plaza. It was a hotel and a whorehouse and a shooting gallery and a hospital and Blunt was the proprietor and manager and enforcer of it all. The lobby where traveling salesmen and conventioneers had once enjoyed complimentary morning coffee among flower arrangements and blandly comfortable furnishings had become a loud saloon whose patrons were mostly military or private security and some sitting at the bar still in the biohazard suits with their respirators thrown back over their shoulders or dangling beneath their chins like a gunslinger's bandanna. Girls in hot pants and platform shoes served drinks and worked the men. He was stopped at the door by a toady who asked him what he wanted and when Cass told him the toady told him to go around to the back.  
  
Behind the hotel next to the kitchen dumpsters and a pyramid of broken furniture and shredded mattresses the toady emerged from a metal fire door and stood there short and bulldoggish in the rain.  
  
"How much've you got?"  
  
"Five hundred dollars and I can get more. I have a fully automatic rifle and a taser and a .45, all military issue none of this homemade popgun shit. And morphine, I have some morphine."  
  
"How much?"  
  
"Twelve amps."  
  
"You got it on you?"  
  
"Not all of it."  
  
"You got the money? Let me see the money."  
  
"Let me talk to Blunt."  
  
"No one talks to Blunt."  
  
A man with a carbine rifle slung behind his back came out into the alley and unzipped his fly and began to piss against the wall and he watched them over his shoulder.  
  
"Can you help me?"  
  
The toady glanced at the man with the rifle and then looked at Cass.  
  
"You said he was shot?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Where's he at?"  
  
"Up by the railyard."  
  
The toady looked at the armed man again and then took Cass by the elbow and led him a couple of feet away.  
  
"There was some dustup at the railyards today. You know anything about that?"  
  
"No, no I don't. Listen, I don't have a lot of time."  
  
"I think you should get outta here."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Get outta here. People're lookin at you."  
  
The other man hitched up his fly and headed back to the hotel and gave Cass a long stare before he went in. When the door closed behind him the toady repeated, "Go on get outta here."  
  
"What about Blunt? They told me there was a clinic here..."  
  
"There's nothin here for you. You stink like a mess a trouble and you can't pay enough to cover that up. Get outta here."  
  
The man turned to the door and Cass grabbed his arm.  
  
"Where else can I go?"  
  
"I'll tell you where. Under the I-40 overpass where it hooks up with 275. That's for people like you. Now get out. If I see you around here again I'll shoot you, understand? Get out."  
  
He shook off Cass's hand and pulled open the door and disappeared inside and the door slammed shut behind him and Cass stood there in the rain and then turned and began to head north up towards the interstate. He left the city center and after a while he came into a neighborhood of wretched apartment complexes and old warehouses and boarded storefronts. The streets were empty and drifted with trash. Everywhere the smell of burning, garbage, open sewers. A car on four bare axles sat askew next to a brick wall and in the backseat a naked woman was being fucked on all fours, the crown of her head hitting the inside of the window. When Cass walked by she looked up at him and shouted "Ten dollars!" and he looked away and kept going and behind him he could still hear her head thumping against the glass. By and by he found himself under the dark shadow of the highway overpass and here were shapeless crowds searching for whatever there was to buy. Canned food and tins of propane and matches. A bar of soap priced higher than the woman in the car. Further back there were stalls selling weapons and all sorts of superstitious charms and dubious medicine. He found a man wearing a straw hat and sitting in a lawn chair with a milkcrate of amber prescription bottles between his feet and a semi-automatic handgun in his lap.  
  
"Are you a doctor?"  
  
"You need a doctor?"  
  
"Yes. Not for me, for my friend."  
  
The man leaned forward and looked behind Cass. "Where?"  
  
"He's not with me."  
  
"What's wrong with him? Sick?"  
  
"He's been shot."  
  
The man whistled. "I'm not yer feller. I don't do wetwork. You need to see Doctor Duane."  
  
"Who's he?"  
  
He pointed back behind him. "See that camper back there? That's Duane. Tell im Bill sent ya."  
  
He trotted across the rubbled ground to a rusting Winnebago. People were sitting or lying outside the camper in the rain, some with tarps pulled over their heads. He climbed the three steps and knocked on the door. From the side of the stairs a woman looked up at him.  
  
"There's a line here, mister," she said. "You have to wait your turn just like anyone."  
  
"I just need to talk to someone."  
  
"We all need to talk to someone, sweetheart."  
  
He turned away from her and knocked again and then the door peeled open and a girl of about sixteen was standing there in a blood-splattered rain poncho. Her hair was pulled back in a greasy ponytail and her hands were bare and also bloody up to the wrists.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"My friend's been shot, I need to see Duane."  
  
"Take a number. All these folks were here before you."  
  
"I have money. I have weapons, ammo...morphine, but I need someone to come with me."  
  
"How much money?"  
  
"About a thousand."  
  
She squinted up at him and then told him to wait and she turned and disappeared behind a shower curtain that was strung up across the middle of the camper. When she lifted it Cass saw a man stretched out on two card tables. There were people holding his arms and legs down but he was still shaking hard enough to make the tables rattle and the legs of the tables and the floor beneath were slimed with blood The stench was indescribable.  
  
The girl came back and said, "Tomorrow morning."  
  
"No. No, that's too late."  
  
"Well, we got our hands full here and all these people're paying too. Tomorrow morning's the best we can do. Can he hold out that long?"  
  
"No, he can't."  
  
"Where's he shot? Arm, leg?"  
  
"Stomach, twice. No exit wounds."  
  
"Shit," she said. She rubbed at her forehead with the back of her hand and left a bloody streak there. "I would've said I could come out myself but for a gutshot there wouldn't be much I could do."  
  
"Is there someplace else?"  
  
"Not for what you're payin. And look, I don't like to say it but it doesn't sound like your friend's gonna make it anyway."  
  
Cass wiped his face. He was sweaty and shaking. "Will you just come out and look at him, it's not that far from here."  
  
She looked at him and her face softened a little. She said, "Shit," and then, "Hold on."  
  
She closed the door in his face and he stood there on the steps and waited for her. The day was growing dimmer and he looked at his watch and saw that it was nearly four o'clock and so Dean had been alone for almost two hours.  
  
The girl came back with a man in a horribly stained butcher's apron. He sent the girl back into the camper and then took Cass by the arm and walked him down the stairs and out a ways. He was wearing pink rubber dishwashing gloves and he peeled them off and reached into the pocket of the apron and pulled out something rolled into a plastic sandwich bag.  
  
"Are you coming?" Cass said.  
  
The man shook his head and he unrolled the bag and took out a syringe and held it up to Cass.  
  
"This is the best I can do. You don't even have to pay for it."  
  
"What is it?"  
  
"Somulose. One shot'll do it, you don't have to inject it into the heart, any vein will work."  
  
"No," Cass said. He shook his head. "No..."  
  
"Listen to me. It's quick and painless, he won't feel a thing. He'll just go to sleep."  
  
Cass took a step back. "I don't need that. I need a doctor."  
  
"Your friend was shot twice in the stomach? He needs a trauma center and there's no such thing. How much blood has he lost?"  
  
"I don't know. A lot, but we bandaged him up..."  
  
"It doesn't matter. He's going to bleed to death and it'll take hours and he'll be in a lot of pain. Even if you managed to get those bullets out he'd still go septic and that would be even worse." He pointed back at the camper. "You know how many people I treat in there actually make it? I don't even have clean water." He held up the syringe. "The best thing you can do is end it quick. It's this, or shooting him in the head. Take your pick."  
  
"There has to be someone else, don't you know anyone?"  
  
"Yeah I know lots of someones. Just like me and just like this." He made a sweeping gesture that took in the whole squalid place. "They won't be able to help you either, but they'll probably rob you and leave you lying in the street. At least I won't do that."  
  
Cass took another step back and he stood there for a moment and then he yanked the pistol out from the small of his back and pointed it at the doctor. "You're coming with me. Now."  
  
Duane smiled. He bent over and put the syringe on the ground.  
  
"I'm sorry," he said and he turned and walked away.  
  
Cass watched him cross back to the camper and climb the stairs. He heard the door squeal open and slam shut. He stood there for a moment. Then he put the gun away and bent over and picked up the syringe. He wrapped it up in the plastic bag and put it in the front pocket of his shirt.  
  
* * *  
  
He would go back to the Crowne Plaza. Or back to the park and see if anyone there knew anyplace else. If not that then the syringe. What else was left? What else?  
  
He came to West Vine and looked at the Hummers and pickups parked around the hotel and could hear the raucous noise coming from inside. The full weight of desperation settled on him and along with it a fog of delusion that made him think if he could only get inside the hotel he would be able to find someone to help. He had things to offer. To sell. Maybe he would even be able to prevail upon Blunt himself if only he could find him.  
  
He began to cross the avenue and he saw the toady at the door and knew the man would shoot him as he'd said. Shoot him and rob him and Dean would die alone and in agony after he had begged Cass to stay and Dean had hardly ever asked him for anything. Not even in hell.  
  
He turned his back to the hotel. The railyard was just north of here. The park was much further to the south. After a while he began walking north with his head bent like a man who was drunk or sick and then he stopped and looked up from his feet at something he had seen before but not seen. He stood there and stared at the church. Red and white brick and a steeple with a clock that had stopped for good at eleven minutes after nine. At the windows the dim flicker of candlelight.  
  
Standing inside the narthex he could hear the rustle of people in the church and he hung back in the doorway. He twitched at a touch on his arm and he looked down, his eyes adjusting to the dark.  
  
"There's no service," the woman said. Tiny and gray-haired and her eyes big in the dark. "All the priests are gone."  
  
"Service..."  
  
"For the Feast of All Saints. It's November first."  
  
Cass couldn't remember the last time he had known the date or the last person who'd kept a calendar. Even Dean had given up on it.  
  
"You can go in and pray, though," she said. "Just mind the others."  
  
He went into the church, not knowing why. He had never understood the way men worshipped God. The things many of them believed as being God or of God were often little more than legends or fairy tales that could be pretty but were usually ridiculous and sometimes brutally wrong and yet there was a holiness to these places that didn't come from any of the stories or statues or stained glass. God's own holiness. Most demons could not set foot in these churches and temples and even those angels who mocked man and all his creations did not mock these.  
  
The church had been stripped of anything valuable. The pews and rugs and carpet were all gone and the people sat or knelt on the bare floor. The stone altar itself remained, too heavy and too useless to plunder, bare of linens and upon it nothing but a guttering stump of candle and a rough-hewn cross. And all these people in prayer before it. Two sticks of dry wood. He could have wept. He could have laughed or fainted. He could have torn his clothes in sorrow.  
  
He got down on the floor. He went down to his knees and put his hands over his face.  
  
_Lord, I was Castiel once. You made me and knew me. If you remember me at all please forgive me. I loved him and didn't know that I would love him because I had only ever loved you. It was weakness and for this I fell from grace but I loved him and I love him and I beg of you Lord to help me or at least let me be able to go with him, wherever the souls of men go, even unto hell. Please, Lord, if you hear me, if you remember me at all. Please. Please. Please._  
  
He raised his head and knelt with his hands palm-up on his knees. After a while he got to his feet and turned and went through the doors and back into the narthex. It was even darker there now and the old woman beside the door was only a pale shape in the shadows and she was slumped over as if asleep. He stood there unmoving and with the sensation of being watched. Yet it was quiet and there was no one here. And then he felt warmth against the right side of his face and his body and he turned his head and saw her seated on a bench against the wall beneath a narrow keyhole window where the last of the daylight still held. Seated in perfect stillness with her hands crossed one over the other in her lap. As if she had always been there. As if she were part of the place itself.  
  
"Castiel," she said.  
  
He crossed the narthex almost at a run and bent over and grabbed her wrists although they burned him.  
  
"Anna, come with me. Come with me, Dean's hurt, he's dying."  
  
"I know," she said. She was as serene as a piece of statuary and there was nothing human left about her except the semblance of humanity that she had worn on earth.  
  
"Come with me!"  
  
She took his hands off her wrists as if he were a child and she said, "I can't."  
  
He went down to one knee so he could look her in the face. "What do you mean, you can't? You can do anything, you're an angel..."  
  
"I'm here for a very short time and I can't leave these walls. I won't exist at all out there. We have no place here anymore."  
  
"But you must have come to help him, why would any of you be here after all this time?"  
  
"I'm here for you, Castiel."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I'm here to take you home."  
  
He stared at her.  
  
"Do you think I'd leave him? Especially now?"  
  
"There's nothing you can do for him."  
  
"He's going to die!"  
  
"He should have died years ago. It will be peaceful, Castiel. It can come to pass right now."  
  
"No! No, don't do that, please!"  
  
"Castiel," she said. "You don't belong here. You never did. You have to come away from this place and be with your own again. All of God's grace will be restored to you. As you were once so you shall be. I know you remember heaven. The joy and the peace. The freedom of loving God, only God, Castiel. Come home with me, brother. Come and be free of all this."  
  
He sat back on his heels and looked at her. His arms dangled at his sides. After a while he smiled.  
  
"I remember it all," he said. "But I still won't go."  
  
"Even if he dies?"  
  
"I would rather be with him at the end than ever see heaven again."  
  
"You love him that much."  
  
He closed his eyes. "Yes," he said.  
  
She fell silent. When he opened his eyes she was bent forward and studying him with such intensity that he felt himself witnessed through to his soul and she seemed to weigh what she saw against what she'd heard and in her eyes he saw a glimpse of the light of heaven and his heart ached for it but he was unmoved.  
  
She sat back against the wall. "Today is the Feast of All Saints," she said. She raised her eyes and passed them over the dark beams of the ceiling. "These Catholics say it takes three miracles to make a saint. But it's much harder than that."  
  
She looked down at him.  
  
"The gift of grace comes to the angels freely, from God. The saints have to find it all on their own in this fallen world. Besieged by loss and need and love as you are. And yet somehow they do." She sighed.  
  
"That's why they're better than us. You will never be an angel again, Castiel. But I think someday you will be a saint." She smiled. "Dean too. He might want to work on the profanity, though. It's a little jarring."  
  
"Dean?" he said. "Dean?" He reached out and seized her hand. "You're going to help him."  
  
"I'm not going to help him," she said. "You are." She grabbed both of his hands and the heat was excruciating and searing and wonderful. "You are." She sat with his hands in hers and he shook from his head to his feet. The church and the city and the rotting world around them receded and dissolved until there was light, only light and he saw nothing and felt nothing and knew nothing that was not light and flame and joy, joy, joy, fire of joy.  
  
When she released him he thought he would fall over. He covered his face and could still feel her burning in his hands. She touched his face and raised his head to look at her and leaned in to whisper to him.  
  
"You think you were punished for this love, but no angel chose you to go down to hell. God alone chose you, Castiel. And God does not make mistakes."  
  
She smiled one last time and then she was gone.  
  
* * *  
  
He didn't remember leaving the church but he found himself back on West Vine. Up the avenue the grotesque hotel carried on just as before. He didn't remember setting off for the railyard but he reached it at dusk and he ran across the tracks and to the freight office and up the stairs and down the hall. When he came to room 210 he threw open the door and saw that Dean was not where he had left him. The corner was empty and his jacket and the canteen and the ampoules of morphine were still there and in the day's last light he could see slick patches of bloody vomit in a track across the floor. He found Dean at the opposite end of the room bent over his knees with the gun still clenched in his hand and he was hyperventilating and gagging and when Cass fell to the floor and took him in his arms Dean didn't know who he was and tried to shove him away. Cass turned him over and Dean's eyes were wide open and glazed and he wasn't looking at Cass or seeing anything at all. He lay in Cass's arms and gasped in his extremity and Cass pushed up his bloodsoaked shirt and shoved the bandage down and laid his hand over the wounds. Dean groaned breathlessly and grabbed Cass's arm and then he went still. He lay in Cass's arms and shuddered and Cass held onto him.  
  
"In all thy ways," he said. "To keep thee in all thy ways, in all thy ways, Dean, in all thy ways." He didn't know he was saying it. He didn't know he was speaking at all.  
  
Dean sucked in a breath and arched until his head was touching the floor. His heels drummed on the floor and he trembled as if in a seizure.  
  
Cass closed his eyes and bent his head and pressed down on Dean's wounds.  
  
"In all thy ways," he whispered. "In all thy ways."  
  
When he opened his eyes some time later Dean was limp and lying across his lap with his eyes closed. He was so still that Cass thought he had been too late and that Dean had died. Then he touched Dean's neck and felt the pulse. It was now too dark to see so he passed his hand over Dean's stomach and felt no wounds, only the glaze of blood they had left behind, already beginning to dry. He closed his eyes.  
  
He sat there with Dean in his arms. After a while he began to cry and after a while he stopped and continued to sit. He wiped his face and passed his hand through Dean's hair and then he laid him down gently and stood up. He was too exhausted to carry Dean so he took him under the arms and pulled him into the corner. He put his back to the wall and drew Dean up against him and covered both of them with his jacket. He wrapped his arms around Dean and rested his head against the wall and the room was dark and Dean was heavy and warm in his arms and then he fell asleep.  
  
* * *  
  
He woke in the middle of the night. Through the window a clear beam of moonlight fell upon the floor and he reached his hand out to it and the light filled his palm like water. He could almost feel it, silvery and cool. Wholly contained in the cup of his hand. He could not look away. He thought his heart would burst. Here at last was grace.  
  
* * *  
  
He woke next when Dean stirred. Dawn was just beginning to gray the windows and Dean sat up and looked down at himself and Cass watched him.  
  
"How do you feel?"  
  
Dean looked back over his shoulder and didn't say anything. He turned away and began unwinding the bloody bandages with slow deliberation.  
  
He said, "Dean?" and sat up.  
  
Dean had gotten the bandages off and he laid the sodden pile down next to him and sat there touching the place where he'd been shot. He turned back to Cass.  
  
"What did you do?"  
  
He told him a little of it. About Anna in the church but not all of it. Dean sat and listened.  
  
"Are the angels back?"  
  
"No. I don't think so."  
  
"Are _you_ an angel again?"  
  
Cass shook his head. "She gave me a little..."  
  
"Juice?"  
  
"Yeah. Juice."  
  
Dean nodded and looked away. "How was she?"  
  
Cass smiled. "Herself. The same."  
  
"Well I..." He creased his forehead. "I hope you said hi for me."  
  
"I probably didn't."  
  
"I guess that's okay," he said and then he sat there. Cass stood up and stretched out his legs. He looked out the window and saw a pale yellow sunrise coming up over the railyard and he knew that it would be a clear day. He turned and held his hand out to Dean and Dean took it but didn't pull himself up.  
  
"God, how many times have you saved my ass?"  
  
He pulled Dean to his feet. "You might want to work on the profanity. It's a little jarring."  
  
"What?"  
  
Cass smiled. "Nothing."  
  
* * *  
  
They took a northward route out of the city that led them through the highway underpasses. At the markets they spent most of their money on a canister of gas in case they found a car. At one of the stalls Dean bought clothes because his own were stiff with blood. He changed into the new things right there and the blood was so thick on his shirt and jeans that it cracked and fell off in ocher slabs when he took them off. There was no place to wash so he stood there and brushed the dry blood from his legs and stomach and it flaked off him like rust. While Dean was getting dressed Cass went to the doctor's camper and knocked on the door. When the door opened and the same girl was standing there in the same grisly state as yesterday he handed her the syringe without a word and left.  
  
They kept heading north and they didn't talk about where they were going. In Powell they broke into a junkyard and after two hours of searching they found a car that started and seemed roadworthy enough and they left the interstate behind and continued on up the county roads. Their route took them north and to the east and they crossed into Kentucky not far from the Cumberland Gap. There was very little here beside the hills and the forest and the weather became cooler as they went further north and it almost began to look like snow again and Cass thought of Bethany's house in Townsend and of those cold nights filled with the eerie sound of branches outside breaking under their weight of ice. How long ago that seemed.  
  
They drove over a small bridge and Dean pulled the car over to the dirt and stopped the engine and said he had to go down to the creek and wash up because he was so filthy that he couldn't stand the itch anymore. From the car Cass could see the little creek and its edges were white with frost and he told Dean he'd freeze down there.  
  
"I don't care," Dean said, pushing the car door open. "I'm crawling outta my fucking skin."  
  
Cass got out of the car when Dean did and he leaned against it with the rifle propped on his knee in case anyone should come along. Dean made his way down the slope and at the bottom he stripped off his clothes and laid them on the russet leaflitter by the side of the creek and splashed water on his arms and legs and then just waded in and hollered out "Fuck!" from the frigid shock. Two crows startled and took off cawing into the November chill.  
  
Cass stood beside the car and looked at Dean and then he looked up into the trees. Stark black against the gray sky. Etchings in charcoal on parchment. The air was cold but fresh and after the city this country place felt clean. Peaceful. It was so quiet. He could hear Dean splashing and huffing from the cold and he turned and opened the trunk and dug around in it and found something like a quilted mover's blanket and he threw it over his arm and went down to the creek bank. Dean was climbing up out of the water when Cass reached the shore and he looked up at him with his teeth chattering. He was almost blue with cold.  
  
"What are you doing? Go up and stay with the car."  
  
"You're freezing. Take this."  
  
"Thanks," he said. He wrapped himself up in it and stood there with his jaw clenched, too cold to move. "Christ, that was cold."  
  
"Come on, I'll get the heater going."  
  
He went ahead of Dean and got behind the wheel and started the engine and cranked up the heater and fan. Dean climbed into the passenger seat beside him still wrapped in the blanket with his new clothes over his arm. He put them down on the floor.  
  
"I didn't want to get dressed until I was dry," he said and he held his hands out to the hot air. "That feels good. Fuck it, that feels _great_."  
  
Cass started to put the car in gear and Dean stopped him.  
  
"I have to show you something," he said and Cass turned to him and Dean pulled his left leg up onto the seat and moved the blanket aside. The arrow wound was gone. There was not even the faintest mark. Dean turned around and showed Cass the other side of his leg and that too was unblemished and he sat back down and looked at Cass.  
  
"Two for one," Dean said. "How about that?"  
  
Cass put his hand out and touched the place where the scar had been. It was completely smooth and Dean's fair hair was grown over it as if there had never been any wound there at all and Cass bent over suddenly and kissed it. He hadn't known he was going to do it and was instantly amazed when he did. A muscle twitched in Dean's thigh but otherwise he didn't move and for a breathless moment Cass could only stay just where he was and then he straightened up without a word and faced forward and put his hands on the wheel. He started the car and pulled back onto the road. From the corner of his eye he saw Dean draw his legs up onto the seat and wrap the blanket around himself and lean against the door.  
  
They rode in silence until Dean said, "She wanted you to go with her, didn't she?"  
  
Cass didn't answer and he felt Dean looking at him.  
  
"Didn't she?"  
  
Finally Cass said, "No," and Dean turned back to the door. After a while Dean said, "I'm glad she didn't. How's that for a selfish bastard?"  
  
He glanced at Dean but Dean didn't look at him again. He opened his mouth and closed it and then he turned back to the road. When Dean was dry he bent over and picked up his clothes and got dressed.  
  
* * *  
  
They drove past nightfall and it was near midnight when they blew a tire and skidded to a bumpy stop. They got out and looked at the flat by matchlight although they both knew there was no spare in the trunk.  
  
"Shit," Dean said. He looked up and around. They were surrounded by black woods. "I guess we should push the car off the road. Stay in it until it gets light."  
  
There was a faint scent of woodsmoke on the air and Cass said he thought there must be people around here.  
  
"Well, as long as they stay wherever they are we won't have any problem with them," Dean said. He stretched his back and said that he needed to piss and he walked a little way into the trees. It was so dark that Cass couldn't see him at all and he stood there with his hand on the warm hood of the car and listened to the engine tick and then from the trees he heard a muffled thump and then silence.  
  
"Dean?" he said. He pulled out the pistol and tried to see. "Dean?" He staggered in the dark toward the trees where Dean had gone and called for him and got no answer.  
  
_No,_ he thought, _No no no..._  
  
He heard a rustle behind him and wheeled around in the blackness and he felt a blow and then nothing.  
  
* * *  
  
He was warm and at first he knew only this. He lay in the warmth with his eyes closed and took a deep breath and sighed it out and then someone touched his forehead and he bolted upright and lashed out.  
  
"Whoa whoa whoa," Dean said. He was crouched beside him with his hands up. "Easy easy, it's all right."  
  
He felt a wall behind him and he pressed his back to it. There was a woman kneeling next to Dean and he looked at her and then at Dean and Dean said, "It's okay, Cass."  
  
"What happened?"  
  
"Just a misunderstanding," Dean said. "How's your face?"  
  
He touched his jaw where he'd been hit and found it tender but not swollen. "Not bad. Are you okay?"  
  
"Yeah," he said and then he shifted and gestured at the woman. "Cass, this is Amy."  
  
"You're Castiel," she said. "I've really wanted to meet you."  
  
He stared at her. He felt as if he should know who she was or did know but couldn't remember.  
  
"How do you know my name?"  
  
"You were in my old house. Do you remember? In Dalhart. Texas? About six years ago?"  
  
He rubbed his forehead and looked at her again and shook his head.  
  
"Cass," Dean said, "You remember, the night after I got out of the hospital? That time Alistair kicked my ass? I was at Amy's house, you came to get me?"  
  
Cass sat there and thought. He remembered a rainy night and he remembered watching Dean as he left the motel room where Sam had left him to be with Ruby. Dean hitchhiking, drinking coffee at a diner. Leaving with the waitress. In her car, to her house where her mother slept on the couch and her children slept upstairs and she slept with him and all night Castiel waited. In the morning he found Dean in the woman's house and Dean had listened to him and gone back to Sam and so here they were these many years later all from that one night in the house of this woman whose name he had not even known until this moment. He looked at Amy and recognized her now, the same pale skin and light hair but less of a girl and prettier for it.  
  
"You found us?"  
  
"No, you found me," she said and then Dean said they should get him up off the floor and so they helped him up and he sat in a chair at a kitchen table with a kerosene lamp burning on it. Dean brought him a cup of water and he drank it.  
  
"I'm sorry about you gettin knocked out," she said. "But we run a pretty tight ship here and we don't take too kindly to trespassers."  
  
"Where are we?"  
  
"East Kentucky. Middle a nowhere and that's how we like it."  
  
"What are you doing here?"  
  
"That's a long story," she said. "And you're in it, sort of. But you all oughta have somethin to eat first, you both look a little wild around the eye. Could you eat somethin?"  
  
Neither of them had eaten since leaving Bethany's house and it seemed to Cass as if that had been weeks ago. He hadn't noticed he was hungry until she mentioned it and then he nodded his head, yes, he could eat something. He was in a sort of daze. He sat there and watched Dean peel potatoes and the potatoes astonished him. There were eggs too, even more incredible.  
  
Amy fried the potatoes and scrambled eggs on a woodfired cookstove and Dean was next to her and Cass felt as if he were watching a married couple go about their evening routine, as if all the world outside had faded away and left only this sanctuary of calm and decency. He wondered if he was seeing things. When he'd heard Dean fall in the woods he'd thought they were going to die after all and die in that senseless and random way but they hadn't and instead they were here. He didn't know what to make of it.  
  
They sat at the table, the three of them, Amy at the head and Cass and Dean opposite each other and on the plates were eggs and potatoes and real tomatoes that she had spooned out of a jar. He picked up his fork and Amy said, "Now, we say grace in this house. No matter what time we eat."  
  
He looked across the table at Dean and Dean cocked an eyebrow at him and smiled and then put his elbows on the table and knit his fingers together and bowed his head down over them so that his mouth and chin were resting on his folded hands. Cass bowed his head too while Amy said grace but Dean was so beautiful in that attitude and in the warm lamplight that Cass had to raise his head and look at him. He felt as if he were seeing him for the first time and yet as if he knew him through and through. He loved him and had always loved him. God does not make mistakes.  
  
His vision shimmered and blurred and Dean looked up at him over his folded hands. He would have looked away but he didn't. Nor did Dean look away. They sat and watched each other across the table and held the gaze until Amy said amen. And even after.  
  
* * *  
  
They sat up in the kitchen where it was very warm from the cookstove. The house also had a woodburning furnace and without electricity the forced-air blowers didn't work but the heat still rose up from the cellar through the old brass registers and warmed the rooms. Cass hadn't been so warm since that last night at the mountain house, in the study before the fire.  
  
Amy told them she began having dreams after the night she'd brought Dean home and an angel had come to her in these dreams and told her to take her family and get out of Texas because hard times were coming. She said this angel didn't look or talk like any of the angels she'd ever read about or thought she'd seen, she was not all white and golden but sad and so grave and she never said anything pretty or sweet or that Amy would have wanted to hear.  
  
"She told me to take my kids and head for the hills. And save whoever I could along the way and we'd be safe here. She told me the truth. My mother said I'd gone crazy and she wouldn't come with us and we had to leave her behind. A month after we left a tornado hit Dalhart and then the dust came and last I heard the whole panhandle's under about twelve feet of dirt. I don't think anybody made it out. I know she didn't. But that's the way everthing is now, isn't it?  
  
"Did she have a name," Cass asked. "Your angel?"  
  
"Her name was Anna," Amy said and Cass glanced at Dean. "You knew her, didn't you? She told me about you, Dean, she said that you had a hard road ahead of you and so God had set an angel over you...that would be you, Castiel. I knew I would see you again, Dean, that I'd see both of you. Anna wanted me to be here to help you when the time came. And now here you are. What does it mean?"  
  
Dean shook his head and looked away from her.  
  
"Are we at the end of the world?"  
  
"No," Dean said. "Not yet."  
  
"You all're gonna stop it, aren't you?"  
  
"Did Anna tell you that?"  
  
"No. She only said...she said that you were chosen. That God had chosen you."  
  
They sat there in silence. The coals in the stove's firebox were banked down to embers and the cast iron creaked softly as it cooled. The kerosene lamp hissed and the clock ticked on the wall as the pendulum swung back and forth.  
  
Cass said, "Do you still see Anna?"  
  
"No I don't. Not in about the last two years," she said and Cass nodded.  
  
"The angels have left us, haven't they?"  
  
He glanced up at Dean. "Not altogether."  
  
" _You're_ still here," she said.  
  
"I'm not an angel anymore."  
  
"Are you sorry?"  
  
"No," he said. He smiled at her. "No I'm not."  
  
* * *  
  
By now it was very late and Amy chunked wood into the stove to keep the fire going until morning and told them they should go to bed. The house was full of people but there was one little place on the third floor where they could sleep if they didn't want to sleep in the kitchen. It was cold up there but there was a bed and blankets and pillows.  
  
They stood up and Dean took the lamp from the table and Cass turned to the door. Amy called Dean back and Cass looked over his shoulder and Dean said to wait and that he would be there in a minute.  
  
Amy said, "Goodnight, Castiel," and he answered, "It's Cass now. Just Cass."  
  
"All right, Cass. Goodnight."  
  
"Goodnight, Amy."  
  
He stepped out of the kitchen into a narrow hallway between the kitchen and the stairs. There was a small bench at the foot of the stairs and he sat down in the dark. He watched the play of lamplight in the kitchen and he couldn't see their shadows but didn't need to. He thought about himself waiting for Dean all night in Dalhart while he slept in Amy's house and he thought about them standing nearly shoulder to shoulder at the cookstove and how she'd become very pretty as if this life for all its hardship had nourished her in a way that being a waitress in Dalhart had not, and he knew that Dean would stay with Amy tonight, and every night that they were here. He put his head against the wall and waited for Dean to come and tell him he could go upstairs by himself. He sat very still and felt very quiet. He closed his eyes and waited.  
  
The light grew brighter against his eyelids because Dean was coming out to give him the lamp. The light moved past him and he opened his eyes and saw Dean standing with his hand on the newel post.  
  
"You awake?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Okay, let's go."  
  
He stood and followed Dean up the stairs. They came to the second floor and went down the hall and turned the corner onto another staircase. Their shadows on the wall and the house all hushed around them.  
  
They went the way Amy had told them until they reached a small room that was no more than an alcove with a curtain across it and a mattress inside and nothing else. There were indeed blankets and pillows on the mattress and the room was cold. Dean set the lamp down on the floor and straightened up and drew the curtain and then he turned to Cass and kissed him.  
  
He kissed him again. He stepped back and stood there with his hands on Cass's face and looked at him and smiled. He raised an eyebrow.  
  
"Yes?" he whispered. "No?"  
  
Cass siezed the front of Dean's shirt and pulled Dean to him. They kissed again, open-mouthed, their hands on each other now. Dean pulled away and went to one knee and Cass looked down at him and saw that he was unlacing his boots. Of course. Cass bent down and did the same and their foreheads touched and they looked up at each other and Dean put a hand on Cass's shoulder and they kissed and went back to untying their laces. When that was done they stood up and undressed. Cass had dreamed and daydreamed and yearned for this so many times and in all of those fantasies they had been frenzied and passionate and thoughtless, tearing off each other's clothes in near desperation but they went about this quietly and separately. When Cass glanced at Dean he was folding his shirt and his t-shirt over his arm and he set them down neatly on the floor and Cass had to stop what he was doing for a moment and just watch him. He was so surprising. Always.  
  
Dean unbuckled his belt and slid down his jeans and stepped out of them and took off his socks too and now they were naked and they embraced and kissed. The room was cold and Dean's back was rippled with gooseflesh and they were both shivering. Dean smelled like the creek where he'd bathed, fresh and faintly mossy with a forest scent of dry leaves and he tasted clean and almost sweet. Cass kissed Dean's cheek and his neck and his shoulder and down to his arm where the old imprint of his own hand was still branded into the flesh and he kissed that too, the silhouette of his palm and his fingers. The scar was warmer than the rest of Dean's skin and he wondered for the first time if Dean could also feel this burn on him and if it was painful or only a reminder of what he had gone through, of what they had gone through and come through and come from together. He laid his head on Dean's shoulder and laced his fingers across the small of his back and Dean held him and stroked his hair and for a while they just stood there like that.  
  
Dean pulled back the covers and they lay down and the sheets were so cold they were almost stiff. They were lying on their sides facing each other and then Cass turned onto his back and Dean was on top of him so warm that the cold bed seemed to be melting like snow beneath them.  
  
Dean raised up on his arms and looked down at him and said, "You've done this before?"  
  
Cass nodded. He began to roll over onto his stomach and Dean touched his shoulder and turned him back. He put his hand under Cass's knee and bent it up towards his chest and Cass understood and he put a hand on Dean's hip to stop him for a moment. Dean was on his hands and knees and the light from the lamp was a pale wash of gold on him and Cass touched his face and his throat and his chest. His stomach where he'd been shot. In the light Cass could see a down of blonde hair beneath his navel and he traced it with trembling fingers and then touched his cock. It was erect and flushed and tipped with clear serum and Cass stroked him, the shaft and seam and slit and rubbed the silky liquid with his thumb and then brought his thumb to his mouth and licked it. He licked his hand until it was wet and then he slicked Dean's cock so that it was glistening in the lamplight and then he put his elbows on the bed and bridged himself up and with one hand under Cass's knee and the other braced flat on the bed Dean thrust up into him. Cass sucked in a breath and clenched his eyes shut and Dean put a hand over his mouth and said, "Shh, shhh." And Cass could only lie there for a moment and when he was sure that he could be quiet he opened his eyes and looked up at Dean and nodded and Dean took his hand away and put it back on the bed and went on.  
  
They went about it so quietly that the only sound was the soft but steady creak of the floor beneath them. Cass pushed his shoulders into the mattress and gripped Dean's arms and rode out his thrusts and it was chill enough in the room to see their own breath and yet they were both sheened with sweat. He reached up and with his hand on the back of Dean's neck he pulled Dean down and kissed him and then Dean drew away and pushed hard into Cass, his shoulder buttressed under Cass's knee and his fingers digging into his thigh and he thrust and thrust and came. Eyes shut, biting his lip to stay quiet, spilling heat into Cass, filling him up. Cass came a moment later and gasped when he came and Dean didn't silence him. He moaned and bore himself down onto Dean and came. Shocking release, euphoria, and no shame, no shame at all.  
  
* * *  
  
They were both shaking. Dean began to pull out and Cass stopped him. He closed his eyes and lay there with Dean inside him. Then he nodded and Dean slid out and Cass caught his breath for missing him already and for wanting him again.  
  
Cass let himself settle onto the bed and Dean lay down on top of him. Cass thought of all the terms of endearment he had heard and had used and not one of them fit except one. He whispered, "Dean." And then again, "Dean."  
  
* * *  
  
They lay together without saying a word and they both dozed and Cass woke when he felt Dean sit up. He touched Dean's arm.  
  
"Where are you going?"  
  
"I'm getting dressed, it's fucking freezing in here. Heat rises my ass."  
  
Cass smiled and pulled him down to the bed. He turned on his side and wrapped an arm around Dean and kissed him and then sat up and covered Dean with the blankets and reached down and bent Dean's knees and lifted his legs into his lap.  
  
"What are you doing?"  
  
"You told me when Sam was cold you used to rub his feet."  
  
"He was just a kid."  
  
"You did it because you loved him."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"And I love you," he said and Dean told him he was nuts but he lay there and let Cass do it.  
  
"That's actually...it's really nice."  
  
"Good," Cass said. He bowed his head and kissed Dean's knee and then he rested his cheek against Dean's leg and Dean stroked his back. They stayed like that for a long time.  
  
Then Dean said, "This doesn't change anything, Cass. I'm still going to Detroit."  
  
Cass nodded. " _We_ are still going to Detroit."  
  
"All right. We."  
  
He caressed Dean's leg and his hand passed over the unmarked place where he'd been shot the year before.  
  
"Three miracles," Cass said.  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"Three miracles. It takes three miracles to make a saint." He raised his head and kissed Dean's leg where the wound had been. "This was one, last year." He let go of Dean's leg and turned and knelt over him and kissed his healed stomach. "This was two." He sat up and lay down over Dean and kissed him.  
  
"Detroit will be three."  
  
"You think so?"  
  
"Yes," Cass said, "God doesn't make mistakes."  
  
"It has to be me. You were right all along."  
  
"I was half right. It has to be both of us."  
  
Dean lay there and looked up at the ceiling and Cass watched him. Dean smiled.  
  
"So you'll be a saint then? You know, three miracles and all?"  
  
Cass smiled. "We'll both be saints."  
  
Dean said, "Cass, all these years and sometimes I still don't know what you're talking about."  
  
Cass laughed and kissed him. When they broke the kiss Dean said, "Get the lamp," and Cass leaned over and turned down the lamp until it was dark. When he lay back down Dean had rolled over with his back to Cass and Cass put his arm around him and Dean took his hand and threaded their fingers together.  
  
After a little while Dean fell asleep and Cass lay awake behind him. He counted Dean's heartbeats. His breaths. He thought of saints and of men. He thought of the angels among whom he'd once been numbered and could have been again and he pitied them. For knowing nothing of this, and for having so little, and who in their great poverty knew only the confines of heaven, and the facility of grace, and the desolate freedom of loving God alone.


End file.
